Becoming one of three universities charging British and EU undergraduates less than £3,000 a year was a gamble that appeared not to pay off in the first year of top-up fees.

Applications dropped by more than the national average, but the strategy looked more hopeful by 2007, when an increase of 15 per cent saw Greenwich outperform most of its peer group.

The university was still performing better than the national average when the official deadline passed for courses beginning in 2008, when fees for degree courses will reach £2,835.

The aim is to strike a balance between affordability for the maximum number of students and the need to invest in the university. The university’s move, completed in 2002, into the former Royal Naval College buildings designed by Sir Christopher Wren provided a campus worthy of one of the most desirable titles in the higher education world.

World heritage

Its name has always conjured up images of history and science in equal measure, and the main campus is now part of a World Heritage site. Wren’s baroque masterpiece is being used, with the former Dreadnought Hospital, to teach over half the university’s students in humanities, business, law, maths, computing, and maritime studies.

Four halls provide more than 1,300 places. Under the leadership of Baroness Blackstone, the former Higher Education Minister, Greenwich has dropped the soubriquet of “regional university” but still draws primarily from southeast London and Kent, a populous county that until recently had only a single university.

The Medway campus, centred on the former naval base at Chatham, has been developed in partnership with Kent and Canterbury Christ Church universities. Some £20 million has gone into one of the first new schools of pharmacy for 20 years, as well as the schools of science and engineering, the Natural Resources Institute, nursing and some business courses.

A joint learning resources centre serves Chatham Maritime and the University of Kent’s neighbouring premises. Another shared facility has improved teaching facilities and expanded student services, the campus having already exceeded the original target of 6,000 students.

Student village

Other departments are situated at Avery Hill, a Victorian mansion on the outskirts of southeast London, where a £14-million sports and teaching centre opened at the end of 2006 and a new gym is under construction. As well as a sports hall and 220-seat lecture theatre, there are laboratories for health courses that replicate NHS wards. A neighbouring building will be the main base for the School of Health and Social Care.

The campus also contains a student village of 1,300 rooms, as well as teaching accommodation for the social sciences, architecture, landscape and construction and the large education faculty, which is one of the few to offer both primary and secondary teacher training courses. Most teaching assessments were favourable, with pharmacy and pharmacology, town planning, sociology and nursing the star performers.

However, Greenwich was near the bottom of rankings from the first two national student satisfaction surveys, although maths produced an outstanding result in 2007. The university achieved some respectable grades in the last Research Assessment Exercise, with computing, German and materials leading the way, although less than a third of the academic staff entered.

Overseas

A fifth of its income is from research and consultancy – the largest proportion at any former polytechnic. Strong links with institutions in Europe and further afield provide a steady flow of overseas students – mainly from China, India and Greece – as well as exchange opportunities for those at Greenwich. Eleven associated colleges in Kent and London teach the university’s courses.

A commitment to extending access to higher education has led to low entrance requirements in many subjects and a relatively high proportion of mature students. More than 97 per cent of undergraduates are state-educated, almost half coming from working-class homes. Both figures are significantly higher than the national average for Greenwich’s courses and entrance qualifications. The downside is a projected dropout rate of almost 18 per cent, although this is an improvement on previous figures and close to the university’s benchmark.

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