Cornish campus hopes to kick-start local economy

Cornwall, one of the last counties without a university, is planning to open a campus by the year 2000.

The Cornwall Task Force - whose members are drawn from local business, local government and Exeter University - has been preparing detailed plans for the past seven months. The new university college will have a minimum of 1,200 new full-time students, as well as 400 staff and 400 other students presently located at Camborne School of Mines and Falmouth College of Art.

The projected capital cost of the campus is Pounds 59.4 million, hopefully raised from the European Union, the National Lottery, the Millennium Fund and elsewhere. Recurrent costs are estimated at Pounds 6 million a year .

The university college is seen as a way of kick-starting the local economy, bringing in an extra Pounds 12.6 million a year. It will also meet the rising demand for higher education in the county. Last year, 20,000 applied to HE institutions, and only 8,000 were successful. Of these, just 2,500 remained in the south-west.