A new group of students have begun Masters courses at technology company Dyson's Malmesbury campus.

The Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology welcomed the 64 students in September.

It is the institute's biggest intake ever and marks a move away from the Degree Apprenticeship programme.

The new students will be working towards a four-year integrated Master of Engineering (MEng) or a two-year Master of Software Engineering Conversion Course (MSc).

Sixty-four students have joined the Dyson Institute of Engineering and TechnologySixty-four students have joined the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology (Image: Dyson) They will not have to pay any tuition fees and they will also be paid a salary, working on real engineering projects for the global technology company three days a week.

Out of the 64 students, 46 undergraduates will be starting the MEng course, and 17 will be starting the new MSc.

The MSc course was open to graduates of any subject who showed a keen interest in coding.

With 18 applicants for every place on the two courses, they are the most oversubscribed engineering courses in the UK.

The MSc course was designed to encourage people from "unorthodox" academic backgrounds into careers in engineering.

This has attracted a diverse range of candidates, including a medical doctor, a history graduate, and a criminologist.

The MSc conversion course mirrors James Dyson’s own route into engineering.

He came to it through art and then design and is passionate about opening up routes into the discipline, believing it to be "the most fulfilling of careers".

The new students will continue to study for two days in the classroom with the institute’s academic staff, and then spend three days working alongside Dyson’s engineers on real-world projects.

The MEng students will continue to live on the company’s research and development campus during their first year in individual pods in the Dyson Institute Village.

Speaking at an institute graduation ceremony on September 28, Mr Dyson said: "Always embrace change, don’t slow down, and keep learning every day.

"The global pressure to innovate at speed is only increasing. We must innovate many times faster than we have before.

"Time to create 5,127 prototypes, as I once did, is long gone. We need to perpetually elevate our technology and achieve much greater speed to market.

"And you are in poll position to make that change happen. We have to fight every day, every month, and every year to win.

"You have the ambition, the capability, and the ingenuity to be central to this."