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Ulster University

NATIONAL
RANK

65.3%

FIRSTS
2:1s

80.6%

COMPLETION
RATE

Key Stats

n/a

TEACHING
QUALITY

36th=

STUDENT
EXPERIENCE

52nd=

RESEARCH
QUALITY

94th

GRADUATE
PROSPECTS

Contact details

ADDRESS

Cromore Road, Coleraine, BT52 1SA View on map >

Telephone

028 7012 3456

http://enquiries.ulster.ac.uk

Website

www.ulster.ac.uk

Open days

contact the university

University Profile

The first phase of Ulster’s £250m campus in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter is due to be completed by the start of the academic year in 2015.

It will take a further three years for work to be completed, but at that point the 12,450 students presently on the Jordanstown site – historically the main teaching centre – will transfer into the city.

Only the £13m High Performance Sports Centre, which houses the Sports Institute for Northern Ireland, and specialist engineering facilities will remain in Jordanstown.

The university, which is among the top 20 universities for the volume of applications it attracts, is planning to expand, but will do so initially through the Magee campus in Londonderry. It has taken 300 additional undergraduates in each of the last two years. Most students are from Northern Ireland, who paid less than £3,700 in 2014-15, when fees for students from other parts of the UK were £6,000.

However, for courses starting in 2015, the main Jordanstown building, seven miles out of Belfast, will remain the location for students taking courses in business and management,

the built environment, computing and engineering, health and sport sciences, and social sciences.

The fourth campus, at Coleraine on Northern Ireland’s north coast, focuses on environmental and life sciences, humanities, modern languages and tourism management. A Confucius Institute opened there in 2012 to foster academic, cultural, economic and social ties between the university and China.

Student City

Mark Bell, students’ union president

Coleraine is home to the £11m Centre for Biosciences, whose academics produced the most highly rated work in the last Research Assessment Exercise, achieving grades that were among the top three in the UK. Almost half of the university’s whole submission was considered world-leading or internationally excellent.

The university is spending £15m at Coleraine on students’ union and catering facilities, and a new teaching block, which will open next year.

Ulster has over 26,000 students, including 3,500 part-timers. All undergraduates complete their studies on a single campus, each of which has well-equipped library and computer facilities.

The existing Belfast campus concentrates on art and design, architecture and hospitality, while Magee has a focus on the creative and performing arts, nursing and social work, computing, business and management, and social sciences.

Magee was a central hub for events associated with Derry-Londonderry as the UK’s first City of Culture in 2013, hosting an international conference on music, a festival of creative and performing arts, and a history symposium.

The university has signed an agreement with the City Council, which will see it almost double its footprint in the city. There will be growth in computer science, engineering and creative technologies. A £12m Centre for Stratified Medicine has opened near the campus, at Altnagelvin Hospital.

Some £20m has been invested in the sports facilities at Jordanstown, including outdoor and indoor sprint tracks, sports science and sports medicine facilities. They will remain available to students, but when the other departments move, much of the campus post-2018 will be given over to housing, shared between students and the local community.

Ulster also offers courses in business, computing and engineering in partnership with the QA Business School at their branch campuses in London and Birmingham.

The university has a growing number of international students – about 1,600 from 80 different countries. The eLearning at Ulster programme provides an alternative mode of study, offering courses online to students all over the world.The university has committed itself to becoming the leading provider of “professional education for professional life”.

One aim is for an increasing number of degrees to provide placement opportunities and professional accreditation. The majority of courses now include the option of a year-long work placement.

Nearly all undergraduates are from state schools and 45% come from working class backgrounds – among the highest levels at any UK university. Ulster is adding to its portfolio of programmes to widen participation in higher education still further with a £360,000 project to engage some of Coleraine’s most disadvantaged communities.

The university runs workshops in primary schools, as well as organising a range of activities to encourage secondary pupils to try a degree. Its award-winning sports outreach programme has been particularly successful.

The projected dropout rate had been improving but, at 17% is significantly higher than the UK average (11.5%) for Ulster’s subjects and entry qualifications.

Accommodation is guaranteed for all first-years students on all four campuses and the students’ union is also active at every location. The social life inevitably varies depending on location.

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