Britain’s surprising, upstart universities

SIR JAMES DYSON, a designer of whizzy home appliances who became a billionaire, has long complained that Britain pumps out too few engineers. So a few years ago he set out to mint graduates of his own. A mini-university he created at his company’s glassy research facility in Wiltshire now has about 160 youngsters enrolled, all in engineering. They spend two days a week in lessons and the rest working on real products, for which they earn a salary. They pay no fees and incur no loans. Instead of residential halls, newcomers live in timber “pods” stacked near Dyson’s labs; on a sunny September afternoon they stand ready for incoming freshers. Two undergraduates say they turned down Cambridge for the chance to attend.