A BUILDING which was once home to policemen and magistrates is now the base for a private further education college attracting students from around the world.

The former Castle Street police station in Bolton has been transformed into a college teaching foreign students business management and science and engineering.

Now the three directors of the Organisational Learning Centre (OLC) say that with the inevitable austerity cutbacks in university numbers they want to offer limited places to British students for the price of the £3,000 top-up fee paid to universities.

The OLC was set up by Professor John Sharp, Dr Chris Bamber and Mark Milaszewicz 12 years ago, while Mr Sharp was still a lecturer at Salford University.

The college moved to the former police station in 2007, spending around £650,000 in refurbishing and equipping the building.

The 10 full-time lecturers and 35 part-time staff teach around 100 full-time and 80 part-time students and the college has a licence to increase full-time students to 150.

Prof Sharp said: “When Chris and I established OLC in 1998 we provided training programmes to a wide range of commercial businesses worldwide, including Rest Assured, AG Glass and the Azzawiya Oil Refinery company.

“We quickly noted a gap in the market for a learning centre that provided flexible, bespoke courses and therefore extended our programme to independent individuals alongside our work in the corporate world. We now have more than 500 courses for students in the UK and overseas.”

The college specialises in HNCs and HNDs in business management, science and engineering courses and facilities include lecture rooms, IT suites, mechanical engineering workshops, science laboratories, test laboratories and inspection rooms.

Traditionally, its courses have been aimed at more mature students from Libya, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan.

Now the directors are looking at offering HNCs and HNDs to British students who might otherwise have gone into the university system but under proposed cutbacks will not be offered places.

Prof Sharp is director of academic affairs and formerly professor of organisational excellence at the University of Salford. He said: “We won’t make a lot of money on the £3,000 but it could have two benefits.

“Firstly, our foreign students would benefit from working alongside British students who would be able to study for HNCs and HNDs and perhaps go into the university system later.”

He said the college was also looking at widening foreign students’ experience of British culture by inviting local people to offer room and board to students.

Prof Sharp added: “We acquired the station in 2007 and immediately undertook an extensive refurbishment to transform it into a fully equipped learning centre.

“Our courses are available to UK and international students all year round with no fixed start date, which is particularly attractive to overseas students, especially our mature students from Libya, who work in the oil industry.

“All of our tutors at OLC hold a post-graduate qualification within their specialism and have previously held a senior position within at least one leading UK organisation. This mix of academia and industrial experience is a great benefit to our students, we know how the theory we teach works in practice.”