This was a teacher training college iirc, and went straight from there to university status. Most of my friends went to bath Spa (there was a link between there and our Access course) and that only got University status a couple of years back.
Dh will attend a former Poly- like others, because he plans on apractical course (stage and theatre lighting with digital electronics), there's only one Uni offering it so not a lot of options!
My course is theoretically more academic, but very few universities offer t- bath Spa does something similar but most seem to be more specific- islam at cardiff, or Buddhism at Bristol. bath Spa and Newport seem to be the only places it is available in reasonable distance from home. yet i think a wide basis is better- I can specialise at MA level, after all.
Also noticed whilst looing around that ex-Polys / HE coleges etc tend to offer better childcare facilities (if theya re offered at all)- this means more mature students- mature students tend to mean higher pass grades atm (Bath Spa reckon far mroe likely to obtain a first)- so this may well equal things out long term, will be interesting to see. We ahve something like 50% mature students across the board, although they're far mroe concentrated on courses like mine, whilst the extensive art and fashion dept tends to be younger, as does tthe media section 9they do a lot of film studies, animation type courses)