Lancaster University

Lancaster University is a public research university at Bailrigg, just south of Lancaster in Lancashire, England. It received its royal charter in 1964 as one of the new campus universities of that decade. Its defining structure is collegiate: undergraduates and many postgraduates belong to one of nine colleges, including a graduate college, while teaching is delivered by academic departments on a single parkland campus of several hundred acres.

Lancaster University Management School, the Lancaster Environment Centre, and InfoLab21 are the institutes graduate students encounter most often. Strengths include management, environmental science, linguistics, computing, and physics, including quantum technology. The university also maintains departments in health and medicine, law, and the arts. A small campus presence in Leipzig and joint arrangements in Ghana extend some postgraduate teaching beyond Bailrigg.

About 16,000 to 17,000 students enroll, with international students making up around a third of the total and coming from more than 100 countries. Academic staff number about 3,000 including researchers. Alumni include actor Andy Serkis, television presenter James May, and novelist Andrew Miller.

Graduate degrees include taught master's, MRes, MPhil, and PhD awards, with a coursework-heavy model in management and a supervision model in the sciences and humanities. Doctoral training partnerships and university studentships are the main funding routes. The year follows the UK term structure. Graduate life is campus-centred: housing, labs, and the graduate college sit on the Bailrigg ridge, with the historic city of Lancaster a short bus ride north.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, Lancaster University lists 217 graduate programs across 42 subjects: 149 master's programs and 65 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in languages & linguistics, law and education. Lancaster University holds rank 227 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.