Short Courses

Why Choose Harper Adams?

1. Committed to Success

Harper Adams prides itself on producing students with the skills the land-based sector needs. Our diverse links and partnerships with industry mean we can regularly update course structures to keep up with business developments. As with all of our courses, professional short courses at Harper Adams have been carefully formulated to provide the practical, industry-based knowledge and experience to help you succeed in your chosen profession. This is a key factor in our excellent graduate employment record and professional reputation.

2. Teaching Excellence

Harper Adams has long been recognised for the quality of its teaching. We are a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and home to the Aspire Learning Centre, enabling us to offer even wider and more modern learning opportunities for all of our students, whether full-time, or visiting us for shorter professional courses.

3. Great Learning Facilities

"The new Bamford Library is an example to others of the innovative facilities needed to attract the very best people. It provides some of the best modern communication and learning facilities available today," said Sir Anthony Bamford, Chairman of JCB. In addition to the Aspire Centre, the learning facilities at Harper Adams include the Bamford Library, a £3 million state-of-the-art learning resources centre, with impressive IT facilities, specialist software, and a large range of journals, books and online resources. Large investments in the campus have seen most lecturing and teaching rooms refurbished and improved and the facilities in all departments continue to expand and develop. We are proud to maintain our strong identification with agriculture and the countryside and our mixed farm, which surrounds the campus, is an invaluable asset.

4. Top Quality

We are proud to offer an outstanding quality of provision. An independent report by The Quality Assurance Agency expressed 'Broad Confidence' in Harper Adams as an effective institution. You can read the report in full and compare our results with other university institutions at www.qaa.ac.uk, under Reviews and Reports. Institutions are listed A-Z. You might also like to look at our Institutional Review Summary, confirming 'Broad Confidence' and compare it to others. Click on Harper Adams in the A-Z, then HTML, and Summary.

5. Supportive Student Community

Harper Adams is friendly and highly student oriented, with around 1,850 undergraduate, postgraduate and associate students. Many more join us on professional short courses each year. Our close-knit community and reputation for excellent student support provides an ideal learning environment. There is an active Students' Union, Welfare and Counselling Service, and help with accommodation, academic support and learning support.

6. Celebrating Diversity

The University College benefits from its vibrant international community, providing a supportive home from home for students from more than 30 different countries including China, Canada, Africa, India and the Ukraine.

7. All You Need on Campus

Harper Adams is a residential university college on an attractive single-site campus, where nothing is more than a ten minute walk away. As well as the teaching and learning centres, we have excellent sports facilities include a swimming pool, all-weather sports pitch, tennis courts, gym, sports hall, rugby, cricket pavilion, bowling green and much more. We also benefit from the use of facilities at the nearby National Sports Centre. In short, Harper Adams combines all the traditional attributes of a compact, personal and caring institution with the expected standards of a modern, highly equipped and forward-thinking university college with its own degree awarding powers.

8. In the Heart of the Country

Harper Adams' rural location on a 343 hectare estate in Shropshire provides the best of town and country. The county's attractions are diverse and ideal for both study and social life. While enjoying all the benefits of the surrounding countryside and tourist attractions, nearby towns and cities such as Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton and Birmingham offer enough to keep you entertained day and night. There are excellent road and rail links, with Telford and Stafford mainline train stations, and the M54 and M6 motorways around 20 minutes drive away.

9. Further Opportunities

Completing a short course here may whet your appetite for further study - and the enhanced career progression that often results in. We have an ever-widening ranging of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, with a strong emphasis on land-based subjects.

10. Learn While You Earn

An exciting new development at Harper Adams now enables working people to earn a higher education qualification through a project in your own workplace, whilst taking advantage of our vast technical knowledge and the confidential support of our expert staff. We are offering a series of bursaries for work-based industrial and professional development projects, whereby you will team up with a tutor from Harper Adams, and use your own workplace project to earn an academic qualification. This might be anything from a foundation degree to a doctorate, but will most often earn a postgraduate certificate, diploma or MSc degree. For further details contact: Charles Cowap on +44 (0) 1952 815305 or Kath Leigh on +44 (0) 1952 815277.