How excellent education and world-leading research at Manchester Met is improving lives and tackling inequalities

A university is much more than a place to get a degree, and Manchester Metropolitan University holds that idea closer to its heart than most.

Staff and students at the city centre institution live by the mantra that Manchester Met is ‘a university built upon unity’ and this approach has been bringing great dividends to the university community, throughout Greater Manchester, and in the wider world.

Making the world a fairer place is a lofty goal, but it’s one that the university is determinedly working towards through its equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) practices and initiatives like Widening Participation and the new Institute for Children’s Futures. The hard work is bringing tangible results.

At the end of September, Manchester Met was placed at number one in Higher Education Honordex’s ranking of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) practices across UK universities.

Against a national average of 41 out of 100, Manchester Met scored 62.1 - recognition that EDI is right at the heart of everything it does, from widening access to higher education to students from all backgrounds to its research activities, and from promoting equality to supporting local communities.

And that isn’t the only award the university has picked up in recent weeks. Also in September, Manchester Met was named as the 2024 winner of the Aziz Foundation's Aziz Inclusion Award, which each year recognises a British university that demonstrates excellence in its offer to British Muslim students.

These awards are no accident: they are the product of Manchester Met’s commitment to be an ‘intentionally inclusive community’.

While it’s easy for institutions to pay lip service to the issues around inequality, or even to sideline them altogether,