We are at the beautiful campus of Birmingham Dubai. For the last eight years, has made great strides, achieved the enrollment scale of more than two thousand students. Most importantly, as a top rated institution, it has got Dubai on the global map of having quality institutions. We're delighted to have professor Yusra.
Professor Yusra, thanks a lot for speaking to us. Would be great to understand the journey over the last eight years.
I think it would be fair to say that at the outset, it was a very bold move from the University of Birmingham to set a brand new campus or brand new initiative in a completely different part of the world. We hadn't really operated in the Middle East or in the Gulf previously. So it was bold move on many fronts, but it was a very well thought out move. There was heavy governance and thoughtful decision making in advance of actually making the move to come here.
The story is possibly broken down into three stages or three phases. We have a project phase, so the actual planning and the development. Originally, we were in what is known as block two, not far from here with the KHDA who have provided immense, actually, amounts of support for us. So that was very early starts.
That was in twenty eighteen. We took small numbers of students. We had a small number of programmes, and it was our opportunity to understand the market. The second stage was when we moved into this campus, and it is absolutely a glorious campus in twenty twenty two.
We are privileged to have the opening in the presence of his highness, sheikh Hamdan. That was the kind of us demonstrating to Dubai, to the UAE, and to the region are the size and breadth of our ambition, the commitment to education, to research and knowledge transfer. So we're really demonstrating the long term commitment to a comprehensive educational experience for our students. So that's the kind of the second stage.
And then the third stage is that kind of growth, the aspiration around really delivering the breadth of what Birmingham University does, which is excellent education, cutting edge research, and impactful knowledge transfer. So really important on many fronts. I think underlying or underscoring all of those is our civic nature. So we're a civic university.
We're a university of the people for the people, of the community and for the community. And we've been privileged to be able to work with local entities, with government, with industry. So that's been, you know, a really important part of what we deliver and what we do here at the university.
So to summarize, the the regulatory framework and the conducive regulatory framework coupled with the vision of the university and the vision of the city in terms of attracting a quality institution, and most importantly, the way the university is integrated, being a civic university, has helped achieve Birmingham the scale that it has over the last seven years.
We're a global top one hundred university on in both actually the QS and the times higher. We have worked very closely with government and regulatory bodies. So whether it's the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, whether it's the Commission for Academic Interpretation, the the KHDA, TCOM, our partners here, multiple different stakeholders have been really instrumental in making sure that we can bridge that learning that needs to happen for an institution like ours to set up in a different jurisdiction. It's a really interesting story and a wonderful journey actually.
Thank you.
