The University of Leicester is a top 20 university in the UK located in the city of Leicester. It claims to be the "most socially inclusive" of the country's top 15 universities with a high proportion of students from state schools and lower socio-economic backgrounds. It is also renowned for its high rates of student satisfaction, which has seen it garner a number of awards over the years.
History
Origins
Dating back to 1921, the University of Leicester began life as Rutland University College only to change its name to University College Leicester six years later. Originally awarding its students degrees from the University of London, in 1957 it was granted a Royal Charter and was then able to award degrees in its own right.
Events
Notable events throughout its history include its victory in the first ever televised University Challenge in 1963 and being named "University of the Year" by the Times Higher Education in its 2008 awards ceremony.
Awards
League tables
In addition to being named "University of the Year" in 2008, the University of Leicester is consistently ranked in the top 20 universities in the UK. The Guardian newspaper ranked it 17th in 2010, while the Times Higher placed it 14th and The Times newspaper put it one place higher at 14th. The QS World University Rankings of 2010 also placed the university in the top 2 percent of universities worldwide.
Student satisfaction
The university has also been awarded Excellent in 19 subjects by the Quality Assurance Agency, in addition to being awarded first place for student satisfaction in the National Student Survey over three years from 2005, 2006 and 2007 and again in 2009.
Organisation
Colleges
The university is split into four different colleges: College of Arts, Humanities and Law, College of Medicine, Biological Sciences and Psychology, College of Science and Engineering and College of Social Science.
Population
At the end of 2009 the University of Leicester had 21,628 registered students of which 10,971 were undergraduate and 10,657 were postgraduate. The institution also had 8,902 distance learning students. It also had 763 full-time academic, 43 part-time academic staff in addition to 385 full-time research staff and 50 part-time research staff.
