The University of York (abbreviated as Ebor or York for post-nominals) is a collegiate plate glass research university, located in the city of York, England. Established in 1963, the campus university has expanded to more than thirty departments and centres, covering a wide range of subjects.
Situated to the south-east of the city of York, the university campus is about 500 acres (200 hectares) in size. The original Heslington West (or Campus West) campus incorporates the York Science Park and the National Science Learning Centre, and its wildlife, campus lakes and greenery are prominent. In May 2007 the university was granted permission to build an extension to its main campus, on arable land just east of the nearby village of Heslington. The second campus, known as Heslington East or Campus East, opened in 2009 and now hosts three colleges and three departments as well as conference spaces, a sports village and a business start-up ‘incubator’. The institution also leases King’s Manor in York city centre. The university had a total income of £331.4 million in 2016/17, of which £66.0 million was from research grants and contracts.
York is a collegiate university and every student is allocated to one of the university’s nine colleges. The ninth college was founded in 2014 and was named Constantine after the Roman emperor Constantine I, who was proclaimed Augustus in York in 306 AD. There are plans to build two new colleges in the near future.
In 2012, York joined the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities. It was ranked joint 12th in the UK amongst multi-faculty institutions for the quality (GPA) of its research and 24th for its Research Power in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework. The 2019 national ranking of York is 12th by The Guardian and 22nd by The Times and in 2020 it was ranked 30th by The Complete University Guide; internationally it ranked 134th (QS) and 119th (THE) for 2019, 128th (CWTS) and between 301-400 (ARWU) for 2018.
Establishment
Morell and the history of the foundations. In 1963 the university opened with 216 undergraduates, 14 postgraduates, and 28 academic and administrative staff. The university started with six departments: Economics, Education, English, History, Mathematics, Politics. At the time, the university consisted of three buildings, principally the historic King’s Manor in the city centre and Heslington Hall, which has Tudor foundations and is in the village of Heslington on the edge of York. A year later, work began on purpose-built structures on the Heslington Campus, which now forms the main part of the university.
Baron Jones of Rusholme, the university’s first Vice-Chancellor, said of the University of York that “it must be collegiate in character, that it must deliberately seek to limit the number of subjects and that much of the teaching must be done via tutorials and seminars. Due to the influence of Graeme Moodie, founding head of the Politics Department, students are involved in the governance of the university at all levels, and his model has since been widely adopted.
Expansion
After 1972 the construction of Colleges ceased until 1990 with the foundation of James College. Initially James was intended to be a postgraduate only college. However, the university began to rapidly expand in size almost doubling in size from 4,300 to 8,500 students. In 1993, therefore it was decided that the College should become open to undergraduates. The expansion of student numbers also resulted in the creation of more accommodation by the University, which was named ‘Halifax Court’; the members of Halifax Court were members of other colleges, however, soon formed their own Junior Common Room. In 2002, Halifax Court was made a full college of the university and was renamed Halifax College.