University of Lancaster

Lancaster University (officially The University of Lancaster) is a collegiate public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several new universities created in the 1960s.

The university was initially based in St Leonard's Gate in the city centre, before starting a move in 1967 to a purpose-built campus located on 300 acres (120 ha) at Bailrigg, 4 km (2.5 miles) to the south of the city. The campus buildings are arranged around a central walkway known as the Spine, which is connected to a central plaza, named Alexandra Square in honour of its first chancellor, Princess Alexandra.

Lancaster is a residential collegiate university; the colleges are weakly autonomous. The eight undergraduate colleges are named after places in the historic county of Lancashire, and each has its own campus residence blocks, common rooms, administrative staff and bars.

Lancaster has ranked in the top thirty, previously consistently top 15 prior to 2027, in all three UK national league tables for the past 10 years, and received a Gold rating in the Government's 2017 and 2023 Teaching Excellence Framework. The annual income of the institution for 2024/25 was £428.4 million of which £49.3 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £389.1 million.

Lancaster is a member of the N8 Group of research universities, which also includes the universities of Durham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York. Since 2015, Alan Milburn has been the university's chancellor.

History

Between 1958 and 1961 seven new plate glass universities were announced, including Lancaster. The choice of Lancaster as the site of the fourth new university was announced on 23 November 1961.

The university was established by royal charter in 1964. The charter stipulated that Princess Alexandra of Kent be the first chancellor. She was inaugurated in 1964. The ceremony also saw the granting of various honorary degrees to dignitaries including the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson.

Princess Alexandra retired as chancellor in 2004 and was at that time the longest serving chancellor of any British university. On her departure, she gave approval for the Chancellor's Medal to be awarded for academic merit to the highest-performing undergraduates and postgraduates. Each year presentations are made to up to five graduates of taught masters' courses and up to six to the highest-performing undergraduates.

The university accepted its first students in October 1964 and there were initially 13 professors, 32 additional members of teaching and research staff, 8 library staff and 14 administrators on academic grades. The motto, "patet omnibus veritas", ("Truth lies open to all"), was adopted. The first science students were admitted in 1965.

The university was temporarily based in the city. A lecture theatre and the university's first Junior Common Room were in Centenary Church, a former Congregational church beside the old factory premises of Waring & Gillow, which were used to accommodate the new students. Many new students were housed in the nearby town of Morecambe. The Grand Theatre was leased as a main lecture room and 112 and 114 in the St Leonard's Gate area became teaching and recreational rooms. The library occupied the old workshops of Shrigley and Hunt on Castle Hill.

Bowland and Lonsdale colleges were founded as the university's first two colleges, and all staff and students were allocated to one of the two, although the first college buildings would not be completed until 1966. The first students moved into residence and set up the first JCRs in October 1968.

The university moved from the city to the new campus at Bailrigg between 1966 and 1970.

In 2014, Lancaster University celebrated its 50th anniversary with a series of events throughout the year, involving alumni, staff, students and local community members.

Campus

Bailrigg

The purpose-built campus occupies Bailrigg, a 360-acre (0.563 sq mi; 1.457 km2) site donated by Lancaster City Council in 1963. The campus buildings are located on a hilltop, the lower slopes of which are landscaped parkland which includes Lake Carter duck pond and the university sports fields. The lake was created in the early 1900s and was later named Lake Carter after Charles Carter, the first Vice Chancellor of the university. The site is three miles (5 km) south of the city centre. Construction of the Bailrigg campus began in November 1965, with the first building completed a year later. The first on-campus student residences opened in 1968.

Unlike some other campus universities, Bailrigg was designed to integrate social, residential and teaching areas. Another major feature of the design is that there is no large central Students' Union building, instead individual college facilities are used as the centre for social and recreational activities .

Vehicular and pedestrian traffic is separated: this is achieved by restricting motor vehicles to a peripheral road with a linking underpass running east–west beneath Alexandra Square. The underpass accommodates the Bailrigg bus station and was refurbished in autumn 2010. Car parking is arranged in cul-de-sacs running off the peripheral road.

The campus buildings are arranged around a central walkway known as "The Spine". The walkway runs from north (County College) to south-west (Graduate College) and is covered for most of its length. The main architect was Gabriel Epstein of Shepheard and Epstein. Architect Peter Shepheard recalls:

"We went up there on a windy day, and it was freezing cold. Every time we opened a plan it blew away. And we said Christ! What are we going to do with these students, where are they going to sit in the sun and all that? Well, we decided, it's got to be cloisters. All of the buildings have got to touch at the ground. We then devised this system and it had an absolutely firm principle: it had a great spine down the middle where everybody walked. That led everywhere. The cars were on the outside, on both sides. When you came into the spaces things were square, they were rectangular courtyards and they were all slightly different. There were two or three essentials: one was that the covered way had to be continuous, the buildings had to be three or four storeys high and connecting to the next one. I thought it worked very well."

Between 2016 and 2018 the Spine was extensively remodelled in a project known as "Design The Spine", with the aim of replacing the decaying wooden canopy, widening bottlenecks, and creating new landscaped green spaces.

Organisation and administration

Colleges

The university has nine colleges. Formerly, these were quasi-autonomous bodies providing for accommodation, welfare, social-life and student discipline, but are currently centrally controlled. All members of the university are members of a college, although in recent years academic staff have had decreasing involvement. Most colleges have about eight or nine hundred members and all on-campus accommodation is linked to a college, with blocks or individual flats being linked to one college or another each year according to demand. The colleges were governed by a syndicate, including a principal (originally a senior academic but nowadays more usually a middle-ranking administrator or IT professional), a Dean and assistant deans (responsible for student discipline), together with a senior advisor, heading a team of College Advisors. These were previously known as Senior Tutor and College Tutors, but the titles were changed in 2011 to Advisor to avoid possible confusion with "Academic Advisors" in students' academic departments. Collectively, the colleges are run by their individual SCR (Senior Common Room) and JCR (Junior Common Room), the latter being made up of student members of the college.

Prior to the founding of the ninth college, Graduate College, in 1992, the eight colleges housed both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Today all postgraduate students are members of the Graduate College, which was founded to specifically address the needs of postgraduates and provide year-round provision for courses with different term dates. Students on integrated master's degrees however are still considered undergraduates and therefore remain in their original colleges.

Seven of the eight undergraduate colleges are named after regions of the traditional county of Lancashire, whilst County College is named after Lancashire County Council which financed its construction.

The college buildings accommodate a number of academic departments, but are primarily social and accommodation facilities, each with its own bar, which forms part of the university's Commercial Services and is open when profitable.

Academic departments

The university is currently organised into four faculties, divided into Departments (sometimes named Schools). Each faculty is led by an Executive Dean, and each academic department by a Head of Department or School.

Three of the four faculties were formed in 2005 from a reorganisation of the previous five-faculty structure (Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, Management, Environmental and Natural Science, and Applied Sciences). Health and Medicine was added in 2008. Arts and Social Sciences underwent a significant reorganisation in 2025; nine "departments" became four "schools", and the faculty was renamed to Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

Academic profile

Admissions

In 2024/25, Lancaster's student body consisted of 18,620 students, composed of 13,935 undergraduates and 4,685 postgraduate students. The university is consistently designated as a 'high-tariff' institution by the Department for Education, with the average undergraduate entrant to the university in recent years amassing between 138–146 UCAS Tariff points in their top three pre-university qualifications – the equivalent of AAB to AAA at A-Level. Based on 2022/23 HESA entry standards data published in domestic league tables, which include a broad range of qualifications beyond the top three exam grades, the average student at Lancaster University achieved 150 points.

According to the 2017 Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, approximately 10% of Lancaster's undergraduates come from independent schools. In the 2016–17 academic year, the university had a domicile breakdown of 66:10:23 of UK:EU:non-EU students respectively with a female to male ratio of 51:49.

Reputation and rankings

In The Sunday Times 10-year (1998–2007) average ranking of British universities based on consistent league table performance, Lancaster was ranked joint 19th overall in the UK. As of recent years, the university has been placed within the top 30 by UK newspaper league tables and in the top 200 worldwide by the main global rankings (see information box for current rankings). It was also ranked the top university in the north-west of England for all ten years of recordings by The Complete University Guide.

In 2014, its 50th year, Lancaster University was ranked 10th in the THE 100 Under 50, a list of the world's best universities under 50 years old. It also appeared in the lists of QS 50 under 50 in all the years before 2014 when it was under 50 years old.

Joint programmes

Lancaster University partnered with Sunway University, Malaysia to offer dual awards undergraduate program since 2006.

Lancaster University entered into a dual degree program with the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT), Lahore. It simultaneously offered two degrees, from CIIT and Lancaster University; graduates would be alumni of both universities. This was the first programme between a UK and a Pakistani university. However, the dual nature of the programme proved problematic and the relationship ended.

In 2017, Lancaster University announced its involvement in the launch of higher education institution, University Academy 92, alongside members of Manchester United's Class of '92: Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil Neville and Nicky Butt. University Academy 92 (UA92) officially opened its doors in 2019, with all degrees accredited by Lancaster University. UA92 offers undergraduate degrees organised around four main specialist subject areas: Business, Media, Sport and Digital, with a vision to make higher education more accessible for all.

Student life

Students' Union

Lancaster University Students' Union (LUSU) is the representative body of students at the university. Unusually, there is no main union building. Instead, the union is organised through the eight college JCRs, each of which has its own social venues and meeting spaces. The union is, however, allocated an administration building by the university. SCAN (acronym for Student Comments And News) is the union's newspaper and was established in 1967. LUSU owns a dual-room, 1,100 capacity nightclub in Lancaster called The Sugarhouse (which survived an attempt to close it in 2019) and also operated an off campus housing agency LUSU Living. It operated a shop until it closed in July 2025.

LUSU also helps to support LUSU Involve, a volunteering unit allowing Lancaster University students to become involved with communities locally and internationally.

There are over 175 different societies operating within Lancaster University. Common areas include sports, hobbies, politics, academic, culture and religion. There are several fairs during the Freshers period in which various clubs and societies promote themselves.

Chancellor's Wharf

Chancellor's Wharf is off-campus student accommodation. It consists of three buildings by the Lancaster canal on Aldcliffe Road. The location is near the city centre, opposite 'the Water Witch' pub and the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. It is open to members of all of the university's colleges. Residents remain members of their various colleges, with Chancellor's Wharf itself being only a hall of residence.

Sport

Every summer term the students take part in the Roses Tournament against the University of York, this is often described as the biggest varsity competition in Europe. The venue of the event alternates annually between Lancaster and York. The competition takes its name from the 15th-century civil war, the War of the Roses, and is organised by the universities' respective student unions, LUSU and YUSU.Lancaster University Rugby League Club are the only team that remain unbeaten in the competition.

Lancaster University Athletics Club (LUAC) was formed in May 2011. The start of the 2011/12 academic year saw the first athletes join the club and by the end of the year receive awards for LUSU 'Society of the Year 2012' and were winners of the Lancaster Athletics Cup 2012. In the 2012/13 academic year the club was given the opportunity to compete in BUCS and Roses along with other sporting societies at Lancaster University.

Lancaster University Swimming and Water Polo Club (LUSWP, formally known as LUST) competes in both BUCS and Roses in the sports swimming and water polo. The swimming team also competes in other charity galas, such as Quest for The Crest, held at Manchester Aquatics Centre. The BUCS swimming competitions include BUCS Short Course National Championships, BUCS Team Championships, and BUCS Long Course Championships, of which there has recently been attendance from Olympic swimmers such as James Guy and 50m & 100m World Champion Adam Peaty. In addition, the water polo team competes in the UPOLO league. LUSWP won the Lancaster University 'Club of the Year' in both academic years 2015/2016, and 2016/2017.

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