Having celebrated its 40th birthday, Lancaster has almost completed a £300-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.

A member of the N8 Group of northern research universities, Lancaster is invariably the highest-placed institution in the north-west in league tables.

It has done well in all four National Student Surveys, finishing just outside the top ten in the results published in 2008. The best results came in French, geography and maths.

Multimedia

• The Times University Guide table

Related Links

• Lancaster University

Multimedia

• Lancaster University official website

Ratings

Lancaster did not quite repeat the scale of success achieved in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise in 2008, but still more than 60 per cent of its work was rated as world-leading or internationally excellent. Physics was the star performer, with the best results in the country, but there were good results in health studies, computer science, management, sociology and art and design. The university has also won nine National Teaching Fellowships since the scheme was launched in 2000.

A new 24-hour student learning space at the centre of the campus will provide students with flexible learning environments and social space with up to date technology. Infolab 21, the £15-million centre of excellence in information communication technology, acts as a technology transfer and incubation facility and houses a training facility for high-tech businesses. Other recent developments include a leadership centre for the highly-rated Management School, while 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.

Flexible

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 first students will graduate in 2009 and new developments include a research centre specialising in bipolar disorder and a new Centre for Organisational Health and Wellbeing.

The projected dropout rate of less than 7 per cent is lower than the average for the subjects on offer. Lancaster also exceeds expectations for the recruitment of state-school students, but the proportion from working-class homes is marginally below the benchmark for the university’s courses.

Campus

The previously uninspiring campus has benefited from recent developments, which have included refurbished lecture theatres, sports facilities and residences. 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 the pioneering 800-room Eco Residence, which opened in 2008, has won an environmental award. 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. Work on a £20-million sports centre with climbing wall (built to Chancellor Chris Bonington’s specifications) will start in 2009. 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, Lancaster is inevitably more limited than larger university centres in terms of off-campus life.

Times recommends

• Students face big rise in university fees
• Students to rate lecturers online
• Lord heads team to look at raising tuition fees