This former Church of England college started branching out well before university status arrived in 2005.

There is a network of campuses right across Kent, the most populous county in England but, until recently, one of the most sparsely provided with higher education.

At the purpose-built campus at Broadstairs, for example, where applications were up by 28 per cent at the start of 2006, the university offers subjects as diverse as commercial music, digital media, business, police studies, computing, nursing, and child and youth studies.

There is also an imposing country house and one-time convalescent home outside Tunbridge Wells, mainly for postgraduates, as well as a new Medway site at Chatham, operated partly in conjunction with Greenwich and Kent universities, and a new University Centre at Folkestone, offering performing and visual arts, also developed in partnership with Greenwich.

The majority of the 14,000 students, however, are at the new university’s Canterbury headquarters. The main campus, which dates from 1962, is a few minutes walk from the city centre, but the university has several off-site buildings in other parts of Canterbury.

One is being developed as a learning resource centre, with specialist teaching and IT facilities, to open in 2009. The Church of England link was underlined with the installation of the Archbishop of Canterbury as the university’s Chancellor in 2005.

Religious studies is available as a single-honours degree or as part of the modular scheme, which cover the arts and humanities, business and science, education, and health and social care. The large health and teacher training programmes make the university the largest provider of higher education to the public services in Kent.

Teacher training

Canterbury is one of the few Grade 1 providers of teacher training offering the full range of courses from early years to primary, secondary, further and higher education. Policing studies is another big recruiter. Religious studies registered the best teaching quality grades, but all the assessments were good, as were the results from the first two national student satisfaction surveys.

The university slipped down the table in 2007, but geography and history did well. Canterbury Christ Church entered an ambitious 34 per cent of academics for the last Research Assessment Exercise, but none of the subject areas reached the top three of the seven grades.

This was not an issue when the institution sought to shed its college title because it has become one of the new “teaching-led” universities. More than 95 per cent of the undergraduates are state-educated and about a third come from working-class homes.

The dropout rate of around 14 per cent is better than the national average for the university’s courses and entry qualifications. Overall, the university’s applications were up by nearly 20 per cent at the start of 2007 and had increased again 12 months later, when most universities were suffering a decline because of the switch from six choices per applicant to five.

Recent capital development has been concentrated on the Medway campus, where 250 computers have been installed in the Rowan Williams Court building.

All the campuses are connected by a microwave link, which provides fast access to teaching and learning materials, as well as email. The new Drill Hall Library at Medway provides 147,000 items, 370 computers and 250 study spaces for Canterbury, Greenwich and Kent students.

Facilities

Another £30 million is being spent on a library and learning resource centre, with integrated student services, at Canterbury. Due to open in 2009, it will have a café, two garden terraces, an atrium and multipurpose floor space for public events, conferences, exams, teaching and exhibitions Social and sports facilities naturally vary between the campuses, although the students’ union is present on all of them. Residential accommodation is not plentiful, but first years are given priority.

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