West London Institute of Higher Education Information

The West London Institute of Higher Education (WLIHE), a two-campus academic establishment, was located in Isleworth and East Twickenham, West London, UK from 1976 until 1995 when it became Brunel University College. In 1997 it was fully integrated into Brunel University.

West London Institute was created in 1976 from the merger of Borough Road and Maria Grey teacher training colleges and Chiswick Polytechnic. Borough Road College, on the Osterley campus, dated back to 1889 in that location, and to 1798 in its previous home on Borough Road in Southwark. As a College of Higher Education from 1976, West London received funding from local government, and it had to perform adequately in the higher education sector. It was placed under the direction, as Principal, of a sport psychologist and former physical education lecturer, Professor John Kane OBE, and a geographer Murie Robertson, who served as Vice-Principal. It awarded undergraduate degrees (CNAA) and HNDs, and continued to train teachers, being, for example, a specialist Wing College for Physical Education. Operating over two campuses, one on St. Margarets Road in East Twickenham, alongside the River Thames, and the other immediately south of the Great West Road in Osterley. The Institute had a strong reputation for sport, and produced many outstanding performers, particularly in track and field athletics and rugby. The Borough Road name persisted on the rugby field and on the Institutes sports strip.

By the 1980s the degree and diploma programmes at WLIHE were being delivered through a variety of disciplines. The Borough Road College campus in Osterley was home to American Studies, English Literature, History, Religious Studies, Geography, Geology, Business Studies, Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Social Work, and Sports Studies, while the Arts, Music, and Education were clustered two miles away at the old Maria Grey College site in East Twickenham. For a number of years, the Colleges were affiliated to The University of Londons Institute of Education and therefore offered University of London degree courses. By the 1990s the courses offered were mostly joint honours awards in various combinations including: American Studies, Drama, Art, French, Business Studies, English Literature, Geography, Geology, History, Religious Studies, Music and Sports Studies, plus single-honours degrees in Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, and Social Work. By the 1990s a few Masters programmes were also offered; for example, in Sport Sciences (the first in Greater London), Social Work, and Environmental Change. A small number of PhDs were also awarded across the disciplines. The British and Foreign School Society kept an archive and ran a National Religious Education Centre on the Osterley site. The Twickenham site also hosted a ballet school, the Rambert. For its size and status (Higher Education colleges in the UK were not really expected to be high research performers), the Institute performed relatively well in research, with several departments achieving national recognition in the Research Assessment Exercises of the 1980s and 1990s (1992 result here) – WLIHE also did well in the 1996 assessment – and a few staff held national research awards from the ESRC and other bodies.

Given the evident strength in research, allied to its reputation in teaching quality, a merger approach by the Vice-Chancellor of Brunel University, Professor Michael Sterling, went amicably – WLIHE had expertise and subject areas that Brunel did not. In 1995 WLIHE ceased to exist. For the next two years, its campuses and departments were known as Brunel University College, under the stewardship of a Provost, Prof. Eric Billett, and then simply as Brunel University from 1997. This status prevailed for about 6 years, before Brunel decided to centralise all of its operations on its Uxbridge campus, 8 miles away. By this time, many departments had already moved from Osterley to Uxbridge. The East Twickenham campus, which contained several older buildings and had a riverfront location, was sold off in 2005 and was largely demolished and converted into luxury housing. Its central building, Gordon House, was on the market for 2 years at £15,000,000 after being sold once. It has been renamed Richmond House, even though it is not in Richmond. The Osterley campus succumbed to the same fate in 2006 and is now a development of new and converted housing around Lancaster House, with the famous sports fields no longer operational (except for the athletics track which is now under private ownership).

The merger with Brunel was generally seen as a positive development by WLIHE staff, given the attraction of a University name for student recruitment and prestige. Almost all staff continued in their jobs, eventually moving to Uxbridge, although the greater expectation of research output at a proper university forced a few into early retirement. In addition, Sterlings replacement, Professor Stephen Schwartz, later forced several Brunel staff into redundancy, closed the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, and merged several other groups. The Brunel merger ended most teacher-training activity, though notably Physical Education was preserved. The Rambert Ballet School went independent in 2003, citing financial and creative reasons for this change of status.

Former staff of some renown include:

Personal account, S.Batterbury

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