Recently ranked 40th in the world, The University of Manchester is the UK’s largest single-site university with more than 35,000 students and an annual income of more than £684m. The University has a rich academic heritage and can lay claim to more than 23 Nobel Prize winners, and has an excellent track record in world-class research. An ambitious strategic agenda, ‘Towards Manchester 2015’, aims to secure The University of Manchester a place in the top 25 universities in the World.
The University of Manchester was created from the merger of The Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST, two of Britain's most distinguished universities, creating a powerful new force in British Higher Education.
Manchester has a long tradition of excellence in Higher Education. UMIST can trace its roots back to 1824 and the formation of the Manchester Mechanics' Institute, whilst The Victoria University of Manchester was founded as Owens College in 1851.
After 100 years of working together, these two great institutions formally combined to form a single university, which came into being on 22 October 2004.
More than 23 Nobel Prize winners have either studied or conducted some of their work here: Rutherford began his work on splitting the atom here and the world's first modern computer also came into being at The Victoria University of Manchester.
Former students of UMIST and The Victoria University of Manchester include Sir Terry Leahy, the Chief Executive of Tesco; TV newsreader Anna Ford; comedian Ben Elton; pioneer of flight Arthur Whitten-Brown; and novelist Anthony Burgess.
The University of Manchester is the UK's most popular university, receiving more applications for undergraduate study (53,300 in 2008) than any other British university.
According to the results of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, The University of Manchester is now one of the country’s major research universities, rated third in the UK in terms of “research power” behind only Oxford and Cambridge, and is well on the way to becoming one of the top universities in the world by 2015.
An impressive 65% of research activity, amounting to 1,193 full-time equivalent staff at The University of Manchester, is judged to be 'world-leading' (4*) or 'internationally excellent' (3*), putting it mong only a handful of universities with an internationally significant research profile over a wide range of subject areas.
“To make The University of Manchester, already an internationally distinguished centre of research, innovation, learning and scholarly enquiry, one of the leading universities in the world by 2015”
The President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Manchester, Professor Alan Gilbert, is leading a bold and exciting plan - the Manchester 2015 Agenda, which aims to make The University of Manchester one of the top 25 universities in the world.
The merger of UMIST and The Victoria University of Manchester in October 2004 presented a unique opportunity to rethink the very idea of a modern university and formulate a blueprint for the future.
The plan identifies goals for all the University's principal activities:
The vision for the University's future is an ambitious one. Its realisation will demand energy and commitment and superb execution.
For more information about the University of Manchester go to www.manchester.ac.uk
