From Access Course to Vice Chancellor. Nick Petford’s story.
Professor Nick Petford, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Northampton went to uni by completing an access course. Here’s his story…
I left school at 16 with scant qualifications and started work in a tool packing factory. There was nothing particularly unusual about this — I went to a large comprehensive school in the 1970s with little emphasis on further study. A few of my close friends (two) went on to university but for those of us with no family background in higher education it was never a consideration. Most of us were earmarked for the construction industry. After doing a City and Guilds in Refrigeration Engineering at the local Technical College I spent the next seven years in a succession of deadbeat jobs, mostly factory work or retail, a notable exception being van driver for the department store Liberty in Regents Street. After a succession of redundancies I was at a low ebb — 23 years old with no money, no job and no future plan.
My first step to university came at the dole office where I saw a poster on the wall advertising something called an Access Course, run by Southwark College and City of London Polytechnic. The deal was you could study part time up to a maximum number of hours a week and still get dole. After passing a maths test I signed up to the science route, basically three A levels in Chemistry, Physics and Biology condensed into nine months. This was a struggle. We were all expected to cope pretty much on our own. Needless to say the dropout rate was high and from a class of about 20 less than ten of us made it through. But this was 1983, things have moved on since and Access students now have dedicated support to help them succeed.
I had intended to read Chemistry but at the last minute changed to Geology and got my BSc from the University of London in 1987. I had job offers but decided I liked research and went on to do a PhD instead. I finished this in 1990 and was lucky enough to get a University fellowship funded by the Royal Society. A year later I had joined Churchill College Cambridge as a Junior Research Fellow. Quite a journey, from a lazy child pretty much uninterested in anything school had to offer, to a Cambridge Don!
Our mission at the University of Northampton is transforming lives, inspiring change. My story shows this as more than just fancy words. With our help the same can be true for you too.
