Once marketed as “the university without ivory towers”, London South Bank’s mission statement underlines the point with an emphasis on wealth creation and the labour market.

The university was in the top ten in the last survey of graduate starting salaries. A 2007 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that a South Bank degree increased lifetime earnings by more than £185,000, which was nearly £26,000 more than the national average.

Over 70 per cent of students are from the capital, most of them from south London and especially from the area’s wide range of ethnic minorities. Of nearly 17,000 undergraduates, over a third are part-time and half are on sandwich courses. Less than half enter with traditional academic qualifications.

Applications were buoyant throughout the period following the introduction of top-up fees and the start of 2009 saw another big increase, of nearly 12 per cent.

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Courses

The proportion of mature entrants is among the highest in Britain, encouraged by initiatives such as the summer school for local people to upgrade their qualifications.

The Fast Track to Higher Education programme has been expanded to include English, IT and science, as well as the original mathematics. The courses, some of which are tailored to the needs of mature students and some for younger students, start at the end of June and are limited to 15 hours a week so as not to affect students’ benefit entitlement.

Diploma and degree courses run in parallel so that students can move up or down if they are better suited to another level of study. The university offers a wide range of foundation and pre-degree courses in business and accounting, law, tourism and hospitality, design and engineering, and science and technology for international students.

Research

Specialist facilities, such as the Centre for Explosion and Fire Research, show that the vocational theme carries through into research. Although the university entered only 87 academics for the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, their average grades were among the best of the new universities. More than 40 per cent of the submission was rated as world-leading or internationally excellent, with social policy, engineering and communication, culture and media studies leading the way.

Campus

London South Bank is in the midst of a 15-year programme to develop its campus in Southwark, near the Elephant and Castle, and not far from the South Bank arts complex.

The nine-storey Keyworth Centre upgraded much of the teaching accommodation and provided a new focal point for the university. The flagship building “Keyworth II” is due to open in 2009, housing the Faculty of Health and Social Care, and providing facilities for the Department of Education and for Sports and Exercise Science.

Some health students are based on the other side of London, in hospitals in Romford and Leytonstone, where there are limited learning resources, supplementing those in Southwark. The university now trains 40 per cent of London’s nurses.

The capital’s attractions are on the doorstep of the main campus but, with nearly 45 per cent of the students coming from working-class homes, many cannot afford them.

The official projected dropout rate is more than 27 per cent, a proportion exceeded by only two UK universities. But LSBU insists that the true rate is less than half that figure because most students do complete their courses eventually; they just take longer than the standard course length.

A new hall of residence means that the university now has residential places within 10 minutes’ walk of the main campus. There are not enough to guarantee places for all first years, but the 2,000 overseas students are all given places if they want them.

Sports facilities improved considerably with the extension of the campus sports centre and the launch of the Academy of Sport. Representative teams have been quite successful in recent years – especially in basketball - and sports bursaries of £3,000 are available for elite performers.

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