3. A comprehensive university

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UCL will maintain the qualities of a comprehensive university, committed to excellence in the arts, humanities, social sciences, physical, biological and medical sciences, engineering and the built environment.

Maintaining the qualities of a university

UCL’s comprehensive character was enshrined in our foundation charter in 1826. The prospectus mapped out eight divisions of study: language, both ancient and modern; mathematics; history; physics; philosophy (mind and logic, known as mental science); moral sciences (moral and political philosophy, jurisprudence including international law, English law and Roman law); political economy; and medical sciences.

Today, in an era when the arts, humanities and social sciences are perceived as being under threat from funding changes, UCL remains committed to maintaining and investing in them. We need to counter a trend towards instrumentalist attitudes towards higher education in the new funding environment. Students and their parents may be tempted to reject degree programmes in the arts and humanities in favour of more professionally-oriented courses, such as economics, law or medicine.

This is not the UCL model: indeed, there is no difference in the employability of UCL graduates from arts-based disciplines. The important element is academic rigour: developing critical skills of research, of identifying and assembling data and the tools of analysis. We will work to preserve this by ensuring that all UCL graduates have skills that will enhance their personal development, as well as being valued by employers.

Undergraduate education

The arts, humanities and social sciences are valuable not only as intellectual disciplines in themselves but as providing a context for producing the well-rounded and educated students we seek, and for securing true intellectual interdisciplinarity in our teaching and research. UCL regards its commitment to arts, humanities and social sciences as fundamental to the concept of a university. It will be reinforced by:

  • the introduction of an expectation for undergraduate entry from 2012 that applicants should hold a foreign language qualification to at least GCSE C grade or equivalent;
  • the introduction from 2012 of a new interdisciplinary undergraduate degree, the Bachelor of Arts and Sciences, which will challenge the traditional English educational model of early specialisation. Students on this programme will pursue study both in sciences and in the humanities;
  • UCL's research agenda, especially through the Grand Research Challenges, which embrace potentially all disciplines across the institution. We will continue to support and invest in these vital areas of scholarship, research and education.

The impact of a comprehensive university

Impact has become a buzzword of important rhetorical value in demonstrating that what goes on in universities is intimately connected to the real world and is not purely intellectual self-indulgence. For some, impact has become a mechanistic measure of the utility of research.

Both the Research Councils and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) have swept it into their funding arrangements: in an ex ante fashion for the research councils, and ex post for the HEFCE by making it a significant measure in the proposed plans for the REF.

UCL will respond to these trends, but by turning the case on its head.

Impact is not simply an add-on to the justification for a research grant application, or to demonstrate ex post the added value given by an individual programme of research. Impacts are too long-run, too diffuse and reliant on too complex a process of further development and collaboration to be able to be properly captured in this way.

Achieving impact is the primary function of the entire entity of a university and expresses its social value. UCL has a major positive societal impact in many ways: through the education and development we provide for our students; through our focused research in basic science – physical, biological, engineering and social – generating new knowledge and insight as part of the global networks of scientific advancement; through our local, regional, national and global networks; through our contributions to evidence-based policy and through the commercialisation of our knowledge and technology.

UCL has been rising to this challenge by taking a lead in addressing the challenges facing the world, for example through the Grand Research Challenges. A report [1] of the European Research Area has rightly concluded that research and innovation must be the cornerstones of a new era in Europe, in which we need to come up with new sustainable energy sources; new medicines, therapies and preventive methods to make appropriate and affordable healthcare available to all; new communications technologies and virtual ways to interact to build durable foundations for peace; new products, new services, new industries, new jobs and new ways of living, with new economic models to manage it all. Indeed, the report concludes, research in the social sciences and humanities will be at least as important to our future as the physical or engineering sciences.

Likewise, the UK’s Council for Science and Technology makes the case for the UK to be a world leader in solving particular global challenges by deploying excellent research working across sectors in strategic and cross-disciplinary ways, and, while continuing to generate great ideas and knowledge, to get better at exploiting them and ideas from elsewhere to harvest greater benefits to the economy and society[2].

No UK university has gone as far as UCL already has in tackling these themes. The Grand Research Challenges in global health, sustainable cities, wellbeing and intercultural interactions demonstrate the capacity for a major institution to engage scholars from across all the disciplines in major challenges transcending their individual disciplinary skills.

The Challenges are not simply about research and intelligence, but about the wisdom that derives from knowledge through application to problems. We will develop the transformative steps that will allow UCL to continue to thrive as a global intellectual leader and to emerge from the recession even stronger and better equipped.

The UCL approach to enhancing impact

The main principles on which our approach is based are:

(1) to conceive of impact as an institution-wide mission – to achieve maximum beneficial impact, holistically conceived – and to promote this vision across UCL and externally;

(2) we have developed an openness to collaboration with other universities and other partners to achieve these goals. UCL is not an academic fortress. Collaboration is easiest with partners that have complementary and largely non-competitive interests, and where the mutual benefits of closer working are obvious to all. The London Centre for Nanotechnology has been a successful collaboration with Imperial, and in the event that other universities seek to join us in UKCMRI, it must be on the basis of scientific collaboration. There are many opportunities for extending these models further, by being clear that UCL is open for business in collaboration, not only where it will enhance our top research performance, but also in securing maximum impact on other fronts – for example, working with teaching-intensive universities in partnerships.

(3) renewed emphasis on public engagement in all aspects of our work. We are already the London leader in this arena, and one of six national centres selected as Beacons of Public Engagement. We should aim to make more of it, especially through our arrangements with other institutions.

(4) making a substantial contribution in our local community, including the UCL Academy in Camden. It will be the first school to be built in the UK sponsored entirely by a university and will become a model of tertiary-secondary educational interaction.

(5) a fresh approach to commercialisation of the fruits of UCL research and the further development of a more entrepreneurial culture within UCL;

(6) the establishment of new capacity in consultancy services, management education, continuing professional development, distance learning and the use of new technologies in enhancing learning.

Comprehensive but incomplete?

Not all disciplines currently find a home at UCL. We have no business school, no oceanography, relatively little in the area of plant sciences, no music department and no theology. We are not averse to opening up wholly new areas of inquiry and education, but do not envisage founding new departments in areas where we have insufficient expertise except in exceptional cases – for example, where another institution or major research group seeks to join us. Our main focus must be on ensuring that all that we already do is world class.

Collaboration

Size and comprehensive disciplinary coverage are insufficient in themselves. They require enhancement through partnership. UCL is not a fortress, but an open institution committed to working collaboratively with others.

Much of the strength of UK universities over the past two decades has been built on competition. We compete for the very best students globally, for the best staff and for all research funding. Some models of funding, particularly through the EU, promote and facilitate collaboration, but the Research Assessment Exercise has tended to work perversely in the opposite direction. It incentivises institutions to invest exclusively in their own facilities, to poach stars and teams of researchers from other institutions and to hoard the resources they have garnered.

League tables heighten this competitive spirit and stratify the higher education sector unnecessarily. Competition is a strong driver of improved performance and we need to maintain it, yet at the same time broaden our footprint of influence. International scientific collaboration at the personal and group level is common throughout UCL. Institutional-level collaboration builds upon existing links and commits both sides to open partnership in defined areas.

Current examples include:

UCL Partners: UCLP is an Academic Health Science System, a strategic partnership between UCL and four major hospitals in London (Great Ormond Street, Moorfields, the Royal Free and the UCL Hospitals Trust). UCLP focuses on improving our mutual performance across the board in research, teaching and population health. A subset of this activity, through a Health Innovation and Education Cluster (HIEC) has drawn in a range of partners across north central and north-east London, and reaching out to Essex and Cambridgeshire.

UCLP provides a framework for both operational and strategic decision-making between the partners, though it is uncertain yet how far our NHS partners will be affected by reforms to the NHS in London.

Its advantage to UCL lies in being able to join up research with teaching and healthcare more explicitly and directly than previously through the 10 themes that have now been approved. Each of them identifies planned outputs and outcomes and measures for assessing them.

The UCL-Yale collaborative: this is a ground-breaking trans-Atlantic, inter-university collaboration. It is a pioneer in not being tied to a single research programme, and in being initiated by the two institutions rather than by the government, as was the case with the now expired Cambridge-MIT venture. It has the capacity to grow beyond the 10 medical themes currently being explored, and there is interest on both sides in developing relations between other disciplines.

A world-class joint venture concluded in 2011 in medical imaging between UCL, King’s and Imperial regarding the use of the GSK-MRC funded PET scanner at the Hammersmith Hospital;

The partnership with the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK and the Wellcome Trust for the development of the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation, where collaboration is reinforced by the proposed addition of King’s and Imperial to the project;

The next ten years will see a significant growth in the volume and strength of collaborations, especially on the international side. In addition to UCL's major offshore operations in Australia, Qatar and Kazakhstan, discussions regarding research collaboration are currently underway in India and China.

There is significant growth in investment in higher education and research across the world. Some of the leading universities in China experienced increases of more than 30% in their research budgets in the past financial year, as the nation advances a vision of future development based on science and technology.

UCL will pursue its global strategy by developing further key institutional collaborations with international partners to develop new research opportunities.

The size of UCL: student numbers

Of the 24,000 students presently registered at UCL, 13.5% are from the rest of the EU and 26% are from outside the EU. Hence, almost 40% of the student body comes from outside the UK. Currently 6,267 are from outside the EU and a further 3,247 come from the rest of the EU.

Demand remains exceptionally strong: applications from international students for postgraduate places have risen by 20% in each of the past two years. Applications from international students for undergraduate study exceed those of any other UK university. Overall, UCL receives in excess of 10 applications per undergraduate place.

Student numbers have been growing steadily during recent years, and the 2010/11 intake was 5% up on the previous year. The pattern of growth has been influenced by the cap imposed by the HEFCE on the UK and EU undergraduate population, so growth has been in postgraduate numbers and international students, which are not affected by the numbers cap.

Further modest growth in student numbers is essential to the continued development of UCL in economically challenging times. Current funding arrangements prohibit us from taking additional UK-EU students, so growth has been possible only in the unregulated areas of postgraduate education and international students, even though UCL regards the education of UK undergraduates as a vital mission of a leading UK university.

However, it is likely that the rules will change in light of the government’s commitment to deregulation. There have been press reports of a government proposal to lift altogether student number controls for students with A-level grades of 2 As and 1 B or above. That would lift the quota from 75% of our UK-EU undergraduate entry. If such a scheme were to eventuate, UCL will consider admitting additional UK-EU undergraduates in programmes where there is:

  • strong demand from high-quality applicants;
  • an opportunity to develop or expand new programmes, such as the BASc;
  • a strategic need to establish a more viable programme or department;
  • a strategic need to maintain an appropriate balance between undergraduate and postgraduate student numbers in a department or faculty;
  • availability of space and other resources;
  • opportunities to achieve economy of scale.

Balance between undergraduate and postgraduate student numbers

A key feature of a research-intensive university is the extent of its postgraduate provision. UCL has deliberately increased the proportion of postgraduate students in recent years, and we remain committed to the policy commitment of the Council’s 2004 White Paper, Designing a 10-year strategy for UCL, to establishing parity between undergraduate and postgraduate student numbers. This is an important characteristic of a research-intensive university.

There are two categories of postgraduate students:

  • Students on postgraduate taught programmes (PGT), commonly of one year duration. There is strong international demand for these programmes, but they make a concentrated demand on resources at the end of the year due to the intensive nature of their final projects. Postgraduate taught courses feed research and allow the development of specialised teaching. They allow us to sustain a broad module base, yielding greater flexibility.
  • Postgraduate research students: despite their relatively low numbers, they are essential to the development of the research base, the future academic community and researchers in business and industry. They are central to the research culture and community at UCL. UCL's innovative PhD programmes also provide excellent opportunities for collaborative research activity with external organisations.

We will continue to seek out the most able postgraduate students from around the world, as well as continuing to attract UCL's own graduates to continue in higher education: see further in Section 6 Research, below. The scheme of impact scholarships introduced in 2010 has proved highly successful, and will be continued and extended.

International students

Demand from international students is slightly ahead of that from home students, though it is not uniform across degree programmes. Some departments are capping overseas student numbers in order to maintain a diverse student body, and the intake of overseas medical students is in any event restricted by national rules to 7.5% of the intake. The criteria for admission apply equally to home and international students.

UCL will continue to recruit strongly internationally. There are several risks that require careful management:

(1) The government has recently reviewed student visas, with a view to reducing significantly the present numbers. Although it has decided not to impose an absolute cap, its ambition remains to reduce overall numbers significantly. UCL has been awarded Highly Trusted Sponsor status under the Points Based Immigration Scheme and will continue to support international students who are admitted to study here through the visa process.

(2) There is an ever-increasing global flow of students, but national competition is also growing steeply. China is investing significantly in its universities; India has announced ambitious plans to create many new universities; Australia, Canada and the USA are competing for talented international students; and several European universities are entering the international market, many offering low-cost programmes taught in English.

(3) Several of the leading US universities offer needs-blind admission to international as well as national students, making them a particularly attractive option for outstanding UK students especially as the cost of a UK higher education rises. This requires that we review all aspects of our competitiveness in student recruitment. Outstanding students are a strong attraction in recruiting outstanding staff, and vice versa.

(4) UCL has the highest number of EU students of any UK university. It is possible that the new fees regime will reduce the attractiveness of UK universities to this group, and that there will be a disproportionate risk to the Treasury of non-repayment of student loans, due not only to the greater complexity of enforcement in other countries but also to the lower median incomes that exist in many other EU member states. Under European law, we are required to treat EU candidates on the same basis as UK applicants.

Although UCL has reorganised its international recruitment and marketing through an International Office, the key strategy in maintaining and enhancing the flow of outstanding international students to UCL is through the quality of the educational experience at UCL.

The size of UCL: growth through merger

The shape and size of UCL have both changed significantly over the past 15 years as a consequence not only of steady improvement in research performance and growth in student numbers, but also of mergers. The School for Slavonic and East European Studies, formerly part of the University of London, joined UCL in 1998, bringing an unrivalled range of expertise in the study of Central, Eastern and South-East Europe and Russia, in language, literature, culture and film, history, politics, economics and business.

In addition, three medical schools have merged (the medical schools of the Middlesex and the Royal Free Hospital with the University College Medical School); and they have been joined within UCL by four formerly independent postgraduate medical institutes: the Institute of Child Health co-located with Great Ormond Street Hospital; the Institute of Ophthalmology co-located with Moorfields Eye Hospital; the Eastman Dental Institute, co-located with the Eastman Dental Hospital, and the Institute of Neurology, co-located with the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square.

This has created one of the most potent concentrations of medical and life sciences in the world, as noteworthy for its scientific strength as for its range of activity. The School of Life and Medical Sciences (SLMS) accounts for more than 60% of UCL's income and expenditure. A strategic restructuring that is presently underway will further focus its mission and harness its resources.

Merger and takeover are not a key growth strategy for UCL. Our working relations with other institutions will increasingly be characterised by collaboration, not least in an era of tightly limited resources.

Nonetheless, further institutional mergers will be welcomed where there is a powerful case: the prospect simply of growth is not in itself sufficient. In order to work well, a merger must:

  • be based on a powerful academic vision to be advanced through the merger that will bring added academic strengths to UCL and advance the academic mission of the institution proposing to merge with us;
  • offer a strong strategic fit, complementing existing strengths in teaching and research, underpinning existing areas of excellence or introducing new disciplines, teaching programmes and/or research groups that have strategic importance to UCL;
  • be capable of implementation with minimum disruption; and
  • be underpinned by a financially positive business case.

Merger is not the only way of enhancing academic strength through association with other institutions. UCL will continue to establish a network of strong institutional collaborative links with teaching and research institutions in London and beyond.

In May 2011, the Council of the School of Pharmacy, University of London, resolved to merge with UCL. Their initial approach, in October 2010, was followed by months of discussions between individuals and groups in the two institutions, with a view to understanding how the scientific strengths that potentially would come from such a merger could be assured. It is anticipated that the formal merger, which meets all of the criteria listed above, will be effected from early 2012.

The size of UCL: international ventures

Following a review of our international strategy in 2008, we decided to relax our previous rule against establishing campus-based activity abroad. The new policy allowed for such ventures, provided they were focused on research and graduate education, and not on mass undergraduate education.

As a consequence, UCL last year opened a campus in Adelaide, South Australia, dedicated to energy and resources. It is part-funded by the Government of South Australia and has enjoyed major financial support from companies in the Australian energy sector.

As a result of an agreement signed last year with the Qatar Foundation, UCL will this year become the first UK university to open a campus in Qatar in Education City, alongside six American universities already established there. Its initial focus is to be on archaeology, conservation and museum studies.

UCL is currently also engaged as adviser to the President of Kazakhstan in connection with the new national University of Astana, and is providing, on a consultancy basis, a range of preparatory courses.

This strategy is an important supporting factor in UCL's global vision. We will continue to take advantage of strategic opportunities abroad where there is clear academic advantage to UCL, a strong desire on the part of UCL academic staff to lead the venture, a favourable funding environment and no compromise to our institutional values.

1European Commission, European Research Area, Preparing Europe for a new Renaissance: A strategic View of the European Research Area, First Report of the European Research Area Board – 2009 EUR 23905 EN.

2CST (2010) A Vision for UK Research.

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