The University of the West of Scotland has transformed Ayr, writes Ken Mann
Few towns in Scotland can boast a fresh investment of £81 million in higher education facilities. In Ayr, University of the West of Scotland (UWS) is the institution responsible for just that.
Its large hub in the seaside town is a key part of a multi-town campus strategy - Dumfries, Hamilton and Paisley are its other town hubs.
In this case, statistics do give an accurate snapshot of impact:
- It covers 18,000 sq m and was developed by UWS in partnership with SRUC (Scotland's Rural College)
- Situated on the Craigie Estate, next to the River Ayr, more than 2,400 students study there, taking advantage of the University's career-focused options in Education, Creative Industries, Health and Business
- It is the base for over 425 university staff
- The university feeds £42.7m into the overall Ayrshire economy - and growing. That's the spending power generated by staff and students and the university's corporate body as well as the employment sustained.
Professor Paul Martin, Depute Principal of UWS, who was born and bred in Ayrshire, comments: "UWS has a transformational influence on the economic, social and cultural development of Scotland and makes a hugely important contribution to continued development of Ayrshire."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article