Having celebrated its 40th birthday, Lancaster has almost completed a £200- million makeover for its campus to give it a more modern feel and increase its capacity by up to 50 per cent.

Still a relatively small institution, the aim is to establish itself in the leading group of research universities and help improve the local economy.

An assessment by investment analysts, who examined educational and financial issues, gave Lancaster a good rating, pronouncing it financially sound and capable of competing for students and research funds nationally and internationally.

The process placed Lancaster among the top dozen universities for research – it is a member of the N8 Group of northern research universities – and in the top 20 for teaching.

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• Sunday Times University Guide table

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• Lancaster University

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• Lancaster University official website

Research

Official assessments place the university higher still: its last research grades were in the top ten and teaching ratings were consistently excellent. Lancaster has also done well in all three National Student Surveys, finishing just outside the top ten in the results published in 2007. The best results came in history and archaeology, physics and finance and accounting.

Results from the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise were an improvement on an already strong performance five years earlier. Business and management, physics, sociology and statistics were all rated internationally outstanding and, with another ten subjects achieving grade 5, more than 70 per cent of the academics were in departments placed in the top two categories.

The university has also won eight National Teaching Fellowships since the scheme was launched in 2000. A £25-million environment centre shared with the Natural Environment Research Council opened in 2003, reinforcing the university’s strength in this area. A £15-million centre of excellence in information communication technology, Infolab 21, was launched in 2005, providing a new research, computing and communications centre on campus. It acts as a technology transfer and incubation facility and houses a training facility for high-tech businesses.

The highly rated Management School has since added a £9.5-million leadership centre and the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts has brought together art, music and theatre studies with the university’s public art gallery, concerts and theatre. Social work, which has a dozen applications for every place, attracted one of a number of glowing reports for teaching. Education, philosophy and religious studies, psychology and music, art and theatre studies all achieved maximum scores. Nevertheless, Lancaster is not just a ratings factory.

Lancaster is another of the campus universities of the 1960s which has always traded on its flexible degree structure. Most undergraduates can broaden their first-year studies by taking a second or third subject. The final choice of degree comes only at the end of that year. Combined degree programmes, with 200 courses to choose from, are especially popular. The degree portfolio now includes medicine, with students taking a five-year course following the Liverpool University curriculum. The projected dropout rate of 7.5 per cent is lower than the average for the subjects on offer.

Access

Lancaster also exceeds expectations for the recruitment of stateschool students, but the proportion from working-class homes and disadvantaged areas are both marginally below the benchmark for the university’s courses. The previously uninspiring campus has benefited from recent developments, which have included refurbished lecture theatres, sports facilities and residences.

Student scene

The university is a ten-minute bus ride from Lancaster, three miles away. Students join one of nine residential colleges, which become the centre of most students’ social life. Most house between 800 and 900 students in self-catering accommodation. Some 3,400 new and updated residential places came on stream in 2005 and more eco-friendly residences will open in 2008, where students can live in town houses with shared facilities and monitor their bills. As part of the developments, Cartmel and Lonsdale colleges have transferred to the New Alexandra Park area of the campus with enhanced social facilities.

The campus has a reputation for being one of the safest in the UK. Sports facilities are good and conveniently placed. There are plans for a new sports centre with climbing wall (built to Chancellor Chris Bonington’s specifications.) For the outdoor life, the Lake District is within easy reach. Road and rail communications are good but, while Manchester and Liverpool are within easy reach, some students still find the immediate location more isolated than they expected.

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