Students at Hull are among the most satisfied in the country – the university has never been out of the top ten in the first three national surveys of their views.

Languages, history and archaeology, business, physics and politics did particularly well, but most departments produced creditable scores.

The university and the city have always commanded loyalty among students, who appreciate the modest cost of living and ready availability of accommodation.

But the quality of courses is also high: drama and electronic engineering achieved perfect scores in teaching assessments, with politics and theology close behind.

Strengths

A long-standing focus on Europe shows in the wide range of languages available at degree level, with the purpose-built Language Institute heavily used by students of all subjects. Strength in politics – confirmed by one of three grade 5 assessments for research, as well as the teaching quality success – is reflected in a steady flow of graduates into the House of Commons.

The Westminster Hull Internship Programme (WHIP) offers a year-long placement and month-long internships for British politics and legislative studies students. However, the university was criticised for deciding to close mathematics following poor recruitment to the honours degree.

No subject was rated internationally outstanding in the last research assessments, but law and geography joined politics in the next category. Social work collected a Queen’s Anniversary Prize and was also rated excellent for teaching.

An Institute for Learning tries to put research findings into practice, developing training courses for lecturers and encouraging the university’s interest in lifelong learning. After years of relative stability, Hull expanded rapidly, both on its spacious home campus and through mergers.

First it added nursing to its portfolio of courses with the acquisition of the former Humberside College of Health, then it took in University College Scarborough in 2000 and finally the university bought the adjacent campus of the former Humberside University.

There are now 19,000 undergraduates, including part-timers, but applications have been subject to big swings. There was a rise of almost 10 per cent in 2007, but the switch from six choices per applicant to five brought a 15 per cent drop.

Development

The main academic development has been the establishment of a medical school in conjunction with York University, where demand for places continued to rise strongly in 2008. Hull’s patient development, in collaboration with the local health authority, of a postgraduate medical school was rewarded with the award of a traditional school housed in a landmark building on the former Humberside (West) campus.

The West Campus also contains a Business Quarter, incorporating the new-look Business School, which was refurbished in 2005, and the Logistics Institute and Enterprise Centre.

The original 94-acre main campus has also seen considerable development, with improvements to social facilities, new buildings for languages and chemistry, a Graduate Research Institute and a state-ofthe- art sport, health and exercise science laboratory.

The campus, with its art gallery and highly automated library, is less than three miles from the centre of Hull. The Scarborough campus has also seen investment, with new laboratories for music technology and digital arts, and a renovated café bar.

Hull has always maintained a roughly equal balance between science and technology and the arts and social sciences, believing that this promotes a harmonious atmosphere, but the Scarborough campus has tipped the scales towards the arts. Only one traditional university in England has a higher proportion of stateeducated students than Hull’s 92 per cent.

Access

Three in ten are from working-class homes, but the projected dropout rate of 13 per cent has slipped above the funding council’s benchmark for the subjects offered. Attempts to broaden the intake further in an area where participation in higher education has always been low, drew praise from Tony Blair. S

tudent leisure facilities, which were always good but becoming crowded, have been upgraded as part of the campus building programme. The students’ union, which was rated the best in Britain in one survey, has been refurbished and has opened the popular “Asylum” nightclub. New football pitches have been added recently on campus and the Sports and Fitness Centre has been attracting praise.

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