| The University of Kent | |||||||||||||
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| Motto | Cui servire regnare est (literal translation: 'whom to serve is to reign') (Book of Common Prayer translation: 'whose service is perfect freedom')[1] |
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| Established | 4 January 1965 | ||||||||||||
| Type | Public | ||||||||||||
| Endowment | £6.8m[2] | ||||||||||||
| Chancellor | Sir Robert Worcester KBE DL | ||||||||||||
| Vice-Chancellor | Julia Goodfellow[3] | ||||||||||||
| Visitor | The Archbishop of Canterbury ex officio | ||||||||||||
| Admin. staff | 2,887 | ||||||||||||
| Students | 19,665[4] | ||||||||||||
| Undergraduates | 16,825[5] | ||||||||||||
| Postgraduates | 2,840[6] | ||||||||||||
| Other students | 180 - European Centres[7] | ||||||||||||
| Location | Canterbury, Medway, Tonbridge, Brussels, Paris, United Kingdom, Belgium and France | ||||||||||||
| Campus | Rural | ||||||||||||
| Colours |
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| Affiliations | Association of Commonwealth Universities Universities UK European University Association Santander Group |
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| Website | http://www.kent.ac.uk/ | ||||||||||||
The University of Kent (formerly the University of Kent at Canterbury, abbreviated as Cantuar. for post-nominals[8]) is a public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom. It was founded in 1965 and is regarded as one of the UK's "plate glass universities".
The University of Kent's main site is a rural campus near Canterbury situated within 300 acres of park land, which houses over 4,300 students. The university has additional UK sites in Medway and Tonbridge, and postgraduate centres in Brussels and Paris. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise the University of Kent was placed 24th out of 118 participating institutions in terms of the best, or 4*, research in a ranking produced by Times Higher Education.
The University of Kent is ranked amongst the top 25 institutions in the United Kingdom at 23rd place.[9] According to The Daily Telegraph, in 2010 just under 30,000 students applied to the University of Kent through UCAS and just 5,242 were accepted - a 17.5% success rate. The average UCAS points offer given for 2009/10 was 328 or ABB-AAB.[10] Kent is a member of the Santander Group of European universities encouraging social and economic development.[11]
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A university in the ancient city of Canterbury was first considered in 1947, when an anticipated growth in student numbers led several localities to seek the creation of a new university, including Kent. However, the plans came to nothing.[12]
A decade later both population growth and greater demand for university places led to new considerations. In 1959 Kent County Council explored the possibilities of a university through its Education Committee,[13] formally accepting the proposal unanimously on 24 February 1960.[14] Two months later the Education Committee agreed to seek a site at or near Canterbury, given the historical associations of the city, subject to the support of Canterbury City Council.[15] By 1962 a site was found at Beverley Farm, straddling the then boundary between the City of Canterbury and the administrative county of Kent.[16] The University was granted its Royal Charter on 4 January 1965 and the first students arrived in the October of that year. On 30 March 1966 Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent was formally installed as the first Chancellor.[17]
The university's original name, chosen in 1962,[13] was the University of Kent at Canterbury, reflecting the fact that the campus straddled the boundary between the county borough of Canterbury and Kent County Council. At the time it was the normal practice for universities to be named after the town or city whose boundaries they were in, with both "University of Kent" and "University of Canterbury" initially proposed. The name adopted reflected the support of both the city and county authorities, as well as the existence of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, which officially opposed the use of a name too similar to its own.[18] The abbreviation UKC became a popular abbreviation for the university.[19] Part of the original reasoning for the name disappeared when local government reforms in the 1970s resulted in the Canterbury campus falling entirely within the City of Canterbury, which no longer has county borough status, and Kent County Council.
The University of Kent at Canterbury was envisaged as being a collegiate establishment, with most students living in one of the colleges on campus, and as specialising in inter-disciplinary studies in all fields.[20] Over the years, changing demands have largely destroyed this original concept, leading to the present state, which is nearer the norm for a British University. However, the four original colleges - Darwin, Eliot, Keynes and Rutherford - remain, each with their own Master, and new college, Woolf, opened in 2008.
The university grew at a rapid rate throughout the 1960s, with three colleges and many other buildings on campus being completed by the end of the decade.[21] The 1970s saw further construction, but the university also encountered the biggest physical problem in its history.[22] The university had been built above a tunnel on the disused Canterbury and Whitstable Railway. In July 1974 the tunnel collapsed, damaging part of the Cornwallis Building, which sank nearly a metre within about an hour on the evening of 11 July.[23] Fortunately, the university had insurance against subsidence, so it was able to pay for the south-west corner of the building to be demolished and replaced by a new wing at the other end of the building.[24]
In 1982 the university opened the University Centre at Tonbridge (now the University of Kent at Tonbridge) for its School of Continuing Education, helping to enhance the availability of teaching across the county.[25]
During the 1990s and 2000s the University expanded beyond its original campus. It now has campuses in Medway, Tonbridge and Brussels, and works in partnership with Canterbury College, West Kent College, South Kent College and MidKent College. In 2003 the title was changed to University of Kent.[26] University of Kent at Canterbury and UKC are still used to refer to the Canterbury site, with other variants such as University of Kent at Medway and University of Kent at Brussels in use for the other sites. The term UKC is also still heavily used by both students and alumni for the University as a whole.
In the 2000s the university entered a collaboration named Universities at Medway with the University of Greenwich, Mid Kent College and Canterbury Christ Church University to deliver university provision in the Medway area.[27] This led to the development of the University of Kent at Medway, opened from 2001. Initially based at Mid-Kent College, a new joint campus opened in 2004.[27] As a consequence of the expansion outside Canterbury the university's name was formally changed to the University of Kent on 1 April 2003.[27]
In 2007 the university was rebranded with a new logo and website. The logo was chosen following consultation with existing university students and those in sixth forms across the country.[28]
The University of Kent is to set its tuition fees for UK and European Union undergraduates at £9,000 for new entrants in 2012. The fee level has been approved by the Office for Fair Access (OFFA). The University’s proposed fee of £9000 was approved by Council on 1 April 2011 and was confirmed by OFFA in July 2011.
The proposed changes to UK and EU undergraduate tuition fees will not apply to international student fees. Check the Kent Tuition Fee FAQ here: http://www.kent.ac.uk/courses/funding/undergraduate/costs/faq.html
The main Canterbury campus covers 300 acres (1.2 km2) and is in an elevated position just over two miles (3 km) from the city centre. It currently has approximately 12,000 full-time and 6,200 part-time students and some 600 academic and research staff.
The university is now divided into five colleges, named after distinguished scholars. In chronological order of construction:
In addition to the 5 main colleges, the following 2 associate colleges:
There was much discussion about the names adopted for most of the colleges with the following alternative names all in consideration at one point or another:
(Both Becket and Tyler were eventually used as the names for residential buildings on campuses and the building housing both the Architecture and Anthropology departments is named Marlowe.)
Each college has residential rooms, lecture theatres, study rooms, computer rooms and social areas. The intention of the colleges was that they should not be just Halls of Residence, but complete academic communities. Each college has its own bar, all rebuilt on a larger scale, and originally its own dining hall (only Rutherford has a functioning dining hall; Darwin's is hired out for conferences and events; Keynes's was closed in 2000 and converted into academic space; and Eliot's was closed in 2006). It was expected that each college (more were planned) would have around 600 students as members, with an equivalent proportion of staff, with half the students living within the college itself and the rest coming onto campus to eat and study within their colleges. Many facilities, ranging from accommodation, tutorials and alumni relations, would be handled on a college basis. With no planned academic divisions below the Faculty level, the colleges would be main focus of students' lives and there would be no units of a similar or smaller size to provide a rival focus of loyalties.
This vision of a collegiate university has increasingly fallen away. The funding for colleges did not keep pace with the growth in student numbers, with the result that only four colleges were built. In later years when there was heavy student demand for scarce accommodation in Canterbury the solution was found in building additional on-campus accommodation but not in the form of further colleges. The hopes that students living off campus would stay around to eat dinner in their colleges were not met, whilst the abolition of college amenities fees removed students' direct stake in their colleges. With the growth of specialist subject departments as well as of other university wide facilities, more and more of the role of colleges was transferred to the central university. Accommodation and catering were transferred to the centralised University of Kent at Canterbury Hospitality (UKCH).[31]
Today the University cannot be considered collegiate in any true sense - applications are made to the University as a whole, and many of the colleges rely on each other for day-to-day operation. Academic departments have no formal ties to colleges other than those that are located within particular college buildings due to availability of space, with lectures, seminars and tutorials taking place wherever there is an available room rather than on a college basis. Many students are allocated accommodation in their respective college, but some are housed in developments with no defined collegiate link whilst others are housed in different colleges. In addition to these college accommodations there are also:
A fifth college, named Woolf College after the writer Virginia Woolf,[35] was opened in 2008.[36] The new college accommodates only postgraduate and mature students.
The Templeman Library (named after Dr Geoffrey Templeman, the University's first Vice-Chancellor) contains over a million items in stock including books, journals, videos, DVDs, and archive materials (for example, a full text of The Times from 1785 onwards), yet it is still only half its planned size. It has a materials fund of approximately £1million a year, and adds 12,000 items every year. It is open every day in term time. It receives 800,000 visits a year, with approximately half a million loans per annum.
It also houses the British Cartoon Archive,[37] (established 1975[29]) a national collection of, mainly, newspaper cartoons, with over 90,000 images catalogued.
The Gulbenkian arts complex acts as the front door to the Canterbury campus. The building includes a foyer and cafe bar and is a meeting place for students, staff and the general public. The foyer also includes the small stage which hosts monthly comedy nights as well as occasional shows such as Jazz at Five and The Chortle Student Comedy Awards. The Gulbenkian Theatre seats 340 and presents student, professional and amateur shows throughout the year. The theatre was opened in 1969 and was named after the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation which helped fund its construction. The Gulbenkian complex also hosts a cafe/ bar and restaurant facility open to students, staff and the general public.
The Gulbenkian Cinema is an independent cinema in the Gulbenkian complex open to students and the general public. It is Kent's regional film theatre showing new mainstream and non mainstream releases as well as archive and foreign language films not otherwise available in the region. In the daytime the cinema is used as a lecture theatre for University students.[38]
Additionally, a £1.5 million sports facility called the Sport Centre was completed in 2003. Its facilities include tennis and squash courts, hockey and football pitches, a state of the art gymnasium, a cardio theatre, a dance studio, a multi-purpose sports hall and a fair trade cafe, but no swimming pool.
There are eight dining areas on campus:
In addition to these main eating outlets there are many vending machines and some bars.
In 2010 the campus nightclub The Venue, was refurbished and modernised. The upstairs area was transformed into a live music venue, formerly known as The Lighthouse and now called The Attic. Both established and local bands and DJs are featured throughout the term. The Venue is open Wednesday- Saturday, The Attic is open Monday- Saturday.
The Canterbury innovation centre launched at Kent in 2010.[39]
Despite its rural location, the Canterbury Campus is in easy reach for local, national and international visitors. Canterbury is the transport hub of East Kent and numerous bus services, including the dedicated 'UniBus' (operated by Stagecoach East Kent) which connects the campus with Canterbury bus station and other locations.
The closest railway station to the campus is Canterbury West which is, as of 2009, served by Southeastern High Speed trains. High Speed trains connect Canterbury with London St Pancras International in 56 minutes. These services stop at Ashford International en route, thus providing a direct connection to Eurostar services to France and Belgium. Standard Southeastern services also connect Canterbury West and Canterbury East Stations with London Victoria and Charing Cross. Both of the Canterbury stations can be accessed by the UniBus service.
The campus is also served by two National Express coach services (Route 007) to/from London each day, with further services operating from Canterbury bus station
In 2000 the University joined with other educational institutes to form the "Universities for Medway" initiative, aimed at increasing participation in higher education in the Medway Towns.[27] The following year the University of Kent at Medway formally opened, initially based at Mid-Kent College.[27] By 2004 a new campus for the university had been established in the old Chatham Dockyard,[27] sharing a campus with Canterbury Christchurch University and University of Greenwich.
The campus accommodation was finished in late 2009 (called Liberty Quays), and caters for over 600 students. The accommodation building includes a Tesco Metro, Subway, and Domino's Pizza.
The University of Kent and Medway Park Leisure Centre have gone a into multi-million pound partnership to provide high quality leisure facilities for university students and the general public. Medway Park was re-opened in 2011 by Princess Anne for use as a training venue for the 2012 London Olympics.
In 1982 the university established the School of Continuing Education in Tonbridge, aiming to make teaching available across the entire county of Kent.[32] Development of the campus has continued almost constantly, with many new buildings added in the 1980s and 1990s.[25] The campus is now called the University of Kent at Tonbridge.
The University is divided into three faculties:
The original plan was to have no academic sub-divisions within the three faculties (initially Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences) and to incorporate an interdisciplinary element to all degrees through common first year courses ("Part I") in each faculty, followed by specialist study in the second and final years ("Part II").[20] The lack of Departments encouraged the development of courses that crossed traditional divides, such as Chemical Physics, Chemistry with Control Engineering, Biological Chemistry and Environmental Physical Science.[40]
However the interdisciplinary approach proved increasingly complex for two reasons. The levels of specialisation at A Levels meant that many students had not studied particular subjects for some years and this made it impossible to devise a course that both covered areas unstudied by some and did not bore others. This proved an especial problem in Natural Sciences, where many Mathematics students had not studied Chemistry at A Level and vice versa.
Additionally many subjects, particularly those in the Social Sciences, were not taught at A Level and required the first year as a grounding in the subject rather than an introduction to several different new subjects. Problems were especially encountered in the Faculty of Natural Sciences where the differing demands of Mathematics and physical sciences led to two almost completely separate programmes and student bases.[40] In 1970 this led to the creation of the School of Mathematical Studies, standing outside the Faculties.[29] The addition of other subjects led to increased pressure on common Part I programmes and increasingly students took more specialised Part I courses designed to prepare them for Part II study.[40]
The University now has the Faculties further divided into 18 Departments and Schools, ranging from the School of English to the Department of Biosciences, and from the Kent Law School to the Department of Economics. Also of note is the University's Brussels School of International Studies, located in Brussels, Belgium. The School offers Master's degrees in international relations theory and international conflict analysis, along with an LLM in international law. In 2005 a new department, The Kent School of Architecture, began teaching its first students. In 2008, Wye College came under Kent's remit, in joint partnership with Imperial College London.
The University of Kent's coat of arms was granted by the College of Arms in September 1967.[13] The white horse of Kent is taken from the arms of the County of Kent (and can also be seen on the Flag of Kent). The three Cornish choughs, originally belonging to the arms of Thomas Becket, were taken from the arms of the City of Canterbury. The Crest depicts the West Gate of Canterbury with a symbolic flow of water, presumably the Great Stour, below it. Two golden Bishops' Crosiers in the shape of a St. Andrews Cross are shown in front of it. The supporters - lions with the sterns of golden ships - are taken from the arms of the Cinque Ports.[41]
The Coat of Arms is now formally used only for degree certificates, degree programmes and some merchandise, as a result of the University seeking a consistent identity branding.[28]
In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise the University of Kent was placed 24th out of 118 participating institutions in terms of the best, or ★★★★, research (according to the RAE league tables in The Times Higher Education Supplement).
| QS[42] (2011/12, world) |
401-450 | |
|---|---|---|
| Complete/The Independent[43] (2012, national) |
34 | |
| The Guardian[44] (2012, national) |
23 | |
| The Times[45] (2012, national) |
39 | |
The 2012 Guardian newspaper University League Tables (published in 2011) placed Kent's ranking at 23rd in the UK, while The Times Good University Guide 2011 (published 2010) puts Kent in 39th place. The Independent (published in 2011) puts Kent in 34th place nationally. (There are some 125 ranked university institutions in the UK). According to many sources, the requirements to get into The University of Kent have increased dramatically, ranging from AAA (Applied Psychology) and AAB (Law and Actuarial Science), and within the Business School, requirements changing from points based to grades based with the average for Business at ABB[46] and Economics AAB.[47] The Complete University Guide shows that the average number of tariff points to get in are around 329 UCAS points (ABB-AAB) in 2012.[48] An overwhelming majority of Kent's 33 subjects are placed nationally within the top 30 (82%), with 3 subject areas in the top 10.[49]
The National Student Survey in 2011 placed Kent in 3rd in London and the South-East for student satisfaction. In addition, Kent has been voted into a top 20 position for the majority of its subjects and has 14 subjects in the top 10 based on overall student satisfaction nationally.[50]
According to The Guardian University of Kent is ranked 9th in the UK[51] for Business and Economics, 12th for Architecture,[52] 14th for Modern Languages.[53] In addition, The Complete University Guide - in association with The Independent 2011 found that Kent ranked 19th for Accounting and Finance,[54] and in 2012 13th for Psychology.[55] Furthermore, The Times Good University Guide ranked the University of Kent 20th for English in 2011[56]
The bilingual Franco-British double-degree programme combines subjects in one degree and is taught in two countries. The first year is spent at the Institut d'études politiques de Lille (IEP), the second and third years at the University of Kent, the fourth year at the IEP of Lille and the fifth is spent in Canterbury, Brussels or Lille.
The students of the Franco-British double-degree programme receive, at the end of the fourth year, the Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree from the University of Kent, the Diplôme by the IEP of Lille and, at the end of the fifth year, either the Master of Arts (MA) degree in Canterbury or in Brussels or the Master delivered by the IEP of Lille, chosen between 14 parcours de formation by the IEP of Lille.[57][58]
The student population is quite mixed, with approximately 22% of students coming from overseas.[59] No fewer than 128 different nationalities are currently represented. The female to male ratio is 55 women to every 45 men.[59]
The Students' Union is known as "Kent Union" and has a considerable presence on campus. Kent Union runs four shops on campus, Essentials (all-purpose food and essentials), Parkwood Essentials (ditto, but in student village Parkwood), Extras (off-licence) and "Unique" (a clothing shop). The Union also runs the Parkwood bar Woody's, "Rutherford bar" (Rutherford) and nightclub The Venue, which from 1999 played host to big names such as Zane Lowe, Pendulum, DJ Hype, Goldie, the former boxer Nigel Benn, Starsky & Hutch original Huggy Bear, the Scratch Perverts, members of B*Witched and Tim Westwood. In recent years it has also played host to Chesney Hawkes, Wagner (of X Factor,) Nero, Santero. The union, having organised the Kent Summerball has managed to secure Dizzee Rascal, Florence and the Machine and McFly to headline in recently, being supported by the likes of Feeder, Tinie Tempah and Tinchy Stryder.
In the early 1980s the Students' Union had a strong reputation for live music and played host to such acts as U2, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, The Smiths', Echo & the Bunnymen and Elvis Costello, and more recently Chas and Dave. With the development in summer 2010 of the Attic, a new live music venue above the Venue nightclub, the Union seeks to host more live acts than ever before with Devlin, Toploader, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. and Zane Lowe appearing to name a few.
The University runs its own Hospitality agency known as Kent Hospitality. They run "Mungo's" (Eliot College Bar), "Origins" (Darwin College Bar), "The Beagle" (A restaurant in Darwin) as well as many other outlets on campus.
The Student Bar was an online community, developed by a student at the university, which had over 6,000 members that consisted of people that either studied or worked at the University of Kent, or were members of the university's alumni.
The website itself was similar to other social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Members were able to create a profile which included information about their course of study, personal details and interests as well as upload photos. The mainstay of The Student Bar was the ability to create and join groups for discussion on a range of topics. It created a closer unity between students at the university that wasn't usually provided for students prior to 2006 and added an extra level of socialising. The Student Bar was opened to students at other universities in the UK but is now defunct.
University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University, as well as their associated Student Unions, fund Canterbury's only student and community radio station—CSR 97.4FM. The radio station is broadcasting from studios at both universities 24 hours a day, with live broadcasting from 7 am - 12 am.
The University has a student newspaper named inQuire and an online news website inQuirelive[60] (launched in January 2008). The newspaper is published every two weeks and is edited by a group of student volunteers. While the newspaper and website are funded by the Students' Union, they are independent in content.
Whilst the University is secular, there is a strong chaplaincy consisting of permanent Anglican and Catholic priests and a Pentecostal minister, as well as part-time chaplains from other denominations and faiths.
The chaplaincy runs the annual Carol Service that takes place every year in the Cathedral at the end of Autumn Term.
Notable alumni of the University of Kent include:
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