In 1951, the de Havilland company gave land in Hatfield adjoining the A1 to Hertfordshire County Council for educational use in perpetuity; the Council used this to build and operate Hatfield Technical College, which trained aerospace engineers for Hatfield's then-dominant aerospace industry. In 1967 it became an early polytechnic, The Hatfield Polytechnic. With the passage of the Further and Higher Education Act, 1992, the institution gained university status.
Hertfordshire was described as "the flagship of the former polys" by the Independent in 2002.[4] As a polytechnic, it was strong in aerospace engineering and computer science. More recently, it has built up its strengths in other areas such as pharmacology, history, geography and astrophysics. Entry requirements have been rising in recent years.
The university has five faculties:
Business School
Faculty of Science, Technology and Creative Arts (formerly 'Creative and Cultural Industries' and 'Engineering and Information Sciences')
Faculty of Health and Human Sciences
Humanities, Law and Education
Inter-disciplinary Studies