University of Manchester

The University of Manchester is a "red brick" civic university located in Manchester, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. The present university was formed in 2004 by the dissolution of the Victoria University of Manchester (which was commonly known as the University of Manchester) and UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) and the immediate formation of a single institution inaugurated on 1 October. The University of Manchester and the constituent former institutions combined have 23 Nobel Laureates among their former students and staff, the third largest number of any single university in the United Kingdom behind Oxford and Cambridge.

www.manchester.ac.uk

The university was named Sunday Times University of the Year in 2006 after winning the inaugural Times Higher Education Supplement University of the Year prize in 2005. According to The Sunday Times, "Manchester has a formidable reputation spanning most disciplines, but most notably in the life sciences, engineering, humanities, economics, sociology and the social sciences".

In 2007/08 it had over 40,000 students studying 500 academic programmes and more than 10,000 staff, making it the largest single-site university in the United Kingdom. More students try to gain entry to the University of Manchester than any other university in the country, with more than 60,000 applications for undergraduate courses alone. In 2007 the University had an annual income of £637 million.

In the first national assessment of higher education research since the university’s founding, the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, the University of Manchester came 3rd in terms of research power after Cambridge and Oxford and 8th for grade point average quality when including specialist institutions.

History

The University's history as an academic institution began in 1824 and is closely linked to Manchester's emergence as the world's first industrial city. The newly merged University of Manchester was officially launched on 22 October, 2004 when the Queen handed over the Royal Charter. It has the largest number of full time students in the UK, unless the University of London is counted as a single university. It teaches more academic subjects than any other British university. The President and Vice-Chancellor of the new university is Alan Gilbert, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne. One of his stated ambitions for the newly combined university is to 'establish it by 2015 among the 25 strongest research universities in the world on commonly accepted criteria of research excellence and performance'.
The Times Higher World University Rankings 2008 ranked Manchester overall 29th in the world and 5th by employer reviews. This followed the awarding by the inaugural Times Higher Supplement's University of the Year prize in 2005.The Academic Ranking of World Universities 2008 published by the Institute of Higher Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked Manchester 5th in the UK, 6th in Europe and 40th in the world. According to High Fliers Research Limited's survey, 'The Graduate Market in 2007', University of Manchester students are being targeted by more top recruiters for 2007 graduate vacancies than any other UK university students. The Times Good University Guide 2009 ranked Manchester 27th of 113 Universities in the UK.

Campus

The Main Campus of the University consists of the roughly adjoining sites of the former UMIST campus, near Sackville Street, and the former main campus of the Victoria University of Manchester, in the vicinity of Oxford Road. The terms North Campus and South Campus (respectively) are sometimes used when making a distinction between the former sites, though the official status of these terms is unclear, and they are not universally used. In addition there are a number of other university buildings located throughout the city, and throughout the further region, such as One Central Park and Jodrell Bank Observatory, the latter in the nearby county of Cheshire. The former is a collaboration between Manchester University and other partners in the region which offers office space to accommodate new start-up firms as well as venues for conferences and workshops

NHS hospitals

The Manchester Medical School, established in 1874, is one of the largest in the country,with over 400 medical students being trained in each of the clinical years and over 350 students in the pre-clinical/phase 1 years. Approximately 100 students who have completed pre-clinical training at the Bute Medical School (University of St Andrews) join the third year of the undergraduate medical programme each year.

The university's Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences has links with a large number of NHS hospitals in the North West of England and maintains presences in its four base hospitals: Manchester Royal Infirmary (located at the southern end of the main university campus on Oxford Road), Wythenshawe Hospital, Hope Hospital and the Royal Preston Hospital. All are used for clinical medical training for doctors and nurses.

The School of Pharmacy at Manchester University also benefits from the university's links with the Manchester Royal Infirmary and Wythenshawe and Hope hospitals. All of the undergraduate pharmacy students gain hospital experience through these links and are the only pharmacy students in the UK to have an extensive course completed in secondary care.

Moreover, the university is a founding partner of the Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, established to focus high-end healthcare research in Greater Manchester.

Departments and Schools

Manchester has the largest total income of all UK universities, standing at £637 million as of 2007. Its research income of £216 million is the fifth largest of any university in the country. Despite its size The University of Manchester is divided into only four faculties, each sub-divided into schools:

Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences consisting of the Schools of Medicine; Dentistry; Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work; Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences; and Psychological Sciences.

Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences consisting of the Schools of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science; Chemistry; Computer Science; Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Science; Physics and Astronomy; Electrical & Electronic Engineering; Materials; Mathematics; and Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering.

Faculty of Humanities includes the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures (incorporating Archaeology; Art History & Visual Studies; Classics and Ancient History; Drama; English and American Studies; History; Museology; Music; and Religions and Theology).

The other Schools are Combined Studies; Education; Environment and Development; Architecture; Languages, Linguistics and Cultures; Law; Social Sciences and the Manchester Business School.
Faculty of Life Sciences unusually consisting of a single school.

University of Manchester was ranked 29th in the 2008 THES-QS World University Ranking