Set up universities in towns and small cities - MP

An MP has called for universities to beryllium established successful smaller cities and towns successful bid to thrust growth.

Jesse Norman, Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire and shadiness person of the Commons, said helium had identified 50 places which lacked a university.

He said helium believed mounting up the caller campuses could beryllium a catalyst for economical growth.

The archetypal students graduated this twelvemonth from Hereford's New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering, helium said, with the "hands-on accomplishment of an apprenticeship, but besides the rigour of a master's degree".

Mr Norman said helium believed smaller institutions, which were much "agile", had been mislaid from the assemblage landscape.

"It highlights what I deliberation could beryllium considered a deficiency of ambition successful the mode we've thought astir higher acquisition arsenic a state implicit the past 50, perchance adjacent longer, years," helium said.

He said determination was a immense request for specializer science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) skills, and that his connection could assistance plug the gap.

His calls travel against a backdrop of difficulties for the assemblage assemblage crossed the UK.

Numerous assemblage bosses person announced redundancies successful caller months arsenic they effort to trim costs.

Keele University announced earlier this week that it would chopped 150 jobs, the University of Nottingham announced 258 occupation losses successful April, portion successful Scotland the University of Edinburgh said 350 jobs would beryllium cut.

This week the authorities announced it was considering a 6% levy connected planetary students, which manufacture assemblage Universities UK said could negatively interaction pupil numbers.

Labour MP and Commons person Lucy Powell said Mr Norman's proposition sounded "like a truly precise important and bully innovation to supply method acquisition and engineering pathways, peculiarly for radical from backgrounds that mightiness not different entree specified education."