One of the four universities designated in 2005, York St John is a Church of England foundation that dates back more than 160 years.

The eight-acre site faces York Minster across the city walls and is a five-minute walk from the city centre. Now serving over 6,000 students, the campus has seen £50 million of development in recent years and more is planned.

The Fountains Learning Centre, which has 500 computer workstations, an internet café and lecture theatre, provides a striking entrance.

Another new teaching development, mainly for health and life sciences, will open in 2008–09 and is intended to be a signature building linking the university quarter with the city centre.

York Diocesan Training School opened in 1841 with one pupil on the register, in whose honour the current students’ union is named. Divided between York and Ripon for most of its existence, the institution diversified beyond teacher training in the 1980s and decided to concentrate all its teaching on York from the start of the decade.

Female

Almost three quarters of the students are female and only about half come straight from school. Education and theology remains the biggest faculty, with 1,700 students taking programmes in teacher education, education studies, theology and religious studies, theology and ministry and evangelism studies.

Health and life sciences are not far behind in terms of size, with 1,600 full-time students and 200 parttimers studying health, psychology and sport.

The large faculty of business and communication has a high proportion of joint honours, while the faculty of arts, which was established in 2001, is expanding, particularly in media subjects.

Creativity

The university was awarded a national centre for excellence in creativity, based on its work in English and theatre studies, which is working an enriched curriculum in the creative arts. The C4C Centre, based in a renovated Victorian Gothic chapel, provides facilities for students, staff, and creative partners to work together.

Another music technology suite has been added, and a refurbishment programme has begun in the design and technology block. Occupational therapy achieved the best score in a mainly undistinguished set of teaching quality assessments. But recent reports from the Quality Assurance Agency have been positive.

Languages and philosophy, theology and religious studies had the highest levels of satisfaction in the National Student Survey results published in 2007. Applications were up by more than 10 per cent at the official deadline for entry in that year, following the award of the university title, and were close to the national average at the official deadline for courses beginning in 2008. Almost 95 per cent of students attended state schools of colleges, while three in ten are from working-class homes.

The projected dropout rate of 13 per cent is better than the national average for York St John’s courses and entry qualifications. The university was one of a handful that set undergraduate charges below the £3,000 maximum when top-up fees were introduced.

Mature

It charged £2,560 a year for degrees in 2007, but York St John joined almost all other universities on fees of £3,145 in 2008. Fees for Foundation degrees remain at the standard level of £1,225 a year. Relatively high numbers of locally based mature students ease the pressure on residential accommodation.

As a result, all first years who want to live in universityowned accommodation are able to do so. More self-catering accommodation for 230 students, costing £10 million, will open in September 2008. Sports facilities are not extensive, but York is popular as a student city with a growing range of clubs as well as, supposedly, a pub for every day of the year.

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