University of Buckingham
Template:Short description Template:Distinguish Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox university
The University of Buckingham (UB) is a non-profit private university in Buckingham, England, and the oldest of the country's six private universities.Template:Efn It was founded as the University College at Buckingham (UCB) in 1973 and admitted its first students in 1976. It was granted university status by royal charter in 1983.<ref name=History/>
Buckingham was closely linked to Margaret Thatcher, who, as Education Secretary, oversaw the creation of the university college in 1973 and as Prime Minister was instrumental in it being elevated to a university in 1983, thus creating the first private university in Britain since the establishment of the University Grants Committee in 1919. When she retired from politics in 1992, Margaret Thatcher became the university's second chancellor, a post she held until 1998.<ref>The University of Buckingham news, 8 April 2013: "University mourns death of Lady Thatcher" Template:Webarchive Linked 19 June 2015</ref> Buckingham's finances for teaching operate entirely on student fees and endowments; it does not receive direct state funding (via the Office for Students or Research England) although its students can receive student loans from the Student Loans Company. It has formal charity status as a not-for-profit institution dedicated to the ends of research and education.<ref name="uobft">Business school to be university college, Financial Times, 25 July 2010</ref><ref name="uobcharity">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Tooley">Tooley, James. ed. Buckingham at 25: Freeing the Universities from State Control, Institute of Economic Affairs, 2001. Template:ISBN.</ref>
History
Some of the founding academics migrated from the University of Oxford,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> disillusioned or wary of aspects of the late-1960s ethos. On 27 May 1967, The Times published a letter from J. W. Paulley, a physician, who wrote: Template:Blockquote Three London conferences followed which explored this idea.<ref name="test">Buckingham at 25, ed. James Tooley (2001), p. 25.</ref>
The university was incorporated as the "University College of Buckingham" in 1976 and received its royal charter as a university from the Queen in 1983. As of May 2016, it is the only private university in the UK with a royal charter.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Its development was influenced by the Institute of Economic Affairs, in particular, Harry Ferns and Ralph Harris, heads of the institute.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The university's foundation-stone was laid by Margaret Thatcher, who became the university's chancellor between 1993 and 1998.
The university's principals (to 1983) and vice-chancellors have been: Lord Beloff, former Gladstone Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford; Alan Peacock, founder of the economics department at the University of York and Fellow of the British Academy; Michael Barrett; Richard Luce, now Lord Luce, former Minister for the Arts; Robert Taylor; Terence Kealey; Anthony Seldon and James Tooley.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
From 2004, students at Buckingham have been eligible for government student loans, which led to an increase in UK students at the university.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Campus
Near the centre of the town of Buckingham is the riverside campus, which is partly contained within a south-turning bend of the River Great Ouse. Here, on or just off Hunter Street, are some of the university's central buildings: Yeomanry House; the Anthony de Rothschild building (which contains Humanities); the Humanities Library; and also some of the student accommodation, looking northwards across the river. Prebend House, a recently restored Georgian house, contains the Vice-Chancellor's office. On the other side of Hunter Street, on the so-called 'island', is the Tanlaw Mill, one of the university's social centres; with the main refectory, the Fitness Centre, and the Students' Union Office.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Overlooking this site, on the hill above, is the extensive Chandos Building. This complex contains the Medical School. It also houses the Ian-Fairburn Lecture Theatre, the largest lecture theatre on the river-side site.
Further on, up the hill, on the London Road, is another element of the campus, in particular the schools of Law and Computing, which is housed in the Franciscan Building, surrounded by other student accommodation blocks. This is opposite the swimming pool and leisure centre. The university has been expanding in recent years. It has acquired a new site on the west side of the river, which will increase the capacity of the river-side campus as a whole. Template:Citation needed
Organisation and governance
Chancellor
On 24 February 2020, Dame Mary Archer was installed as chancellor of the university.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Former chancellors were Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone (from 1983 to 1993), Baroness Margaret Thatcher (from 1993 to 1998), Martin Jacomb (from 1999 to 2010), Lord Tanlaw (from 2010 to 2013),<ref name=Graduation>Template:Cite web</ref> and Lady Keswick (from 2014 to 2020).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Vice-chancellor
Since October 2020, the vice-chancellor is Professor James Tooley.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Academic profile
Teaching
The university's schools (faculties) are: Business, Computing, Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, Law, Medicine, Postgraduate Medicine and Allied Health, Psychology, and the Foundation Department.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Each of these is presided over by a dean.
The quality of the university's provision is maintained, as at other UK universities, by an external examiner system (i.e., professors from other universities oversee and report on exams and marking), by an academic advisory council (comprising a range of subject-specialist academics from other universities), and by membership of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA).
The university was created as a liberal arts college, and still describes itself as such, although in an interview with The Guardian in 2003, then-vice-chancellor Terence Kealey remarked that it had "become a vocational school for law and business for non-British students, because that's where the market has taken us".<ref name="woodward20030106">Template:Cite news</ref> Consequently, major humanities subjects such as history and politics are no longer offered as stand-alone degrees, instead being combined with economics as a degree in international studies. Economics, however, is available as a stand-alone degree as is English literature, as a single honours subject, and in combinations with English Language, or Journalism, and related areas.
Some degree programmes at Buckingham, Law for example, place greater emphasis on exams as an assessment method rather than coursework, but in general its degree programmes balance assessment between exams and coursework.<ref name=TimesOnline>Template:Cite news</ref>
School of Medicine
The Medical School offers a 4.5 year MB ChB medical degree, accredited by the General Medical Council.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Other medical courses are offered in the School of Postgraduate Medicine and Allied Health. The school opened in 2015 as the first private medical school in the UK (since the establishment of the University Grants Committee in 1919), in partnership with the Milton Keynes NHS Foundation Trust.<ref name="Stu BMJ">Template:Cite journal</ref>
"Alternative" medicine
The university ran a diploma course in "integrated medicine" that was later withdrawn under pressure from David Colquhoun,<ref name=DC>Template:Cite web</ref> a campaigner against pseudoscience and alternative medicine. The Dean of the School, Karol Sikora, was a Foundation Fellow of Prince Charles's now-defunct alternative medicine lobby group, The Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and is Chair of the Faculty of Integrated Medicine, which is unaffiliated with any university but also includes Rosy Daniel and Mark Atkinson, who co-ordinated Buckingham's "integrated medicine" course.<ref name=DC/> Daniel has been criticised by David Colquhoun for breaches of the Cancer Act 1939, regarding claims she made for Carctol, a herbal dietary supplement with no utility in treating cancer.<ref name=DC/> Andrew Miles is on the scientific council of the College of Medicine<ref name=DC_COLLEGE>Template:Cite news</ref> an alternative medicine lobby group linked to the then Prince of Wales.<ref name=BMJ_COLLEGE>Template:Cite news</ref> Sikora is also a "professional member" of this organisation.<ref>Sikora's profile Template:Webarchive is on the College of Medicine website.</ref> The degree was stripped of validation by the University of Buckingham prior to the first graduation.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
School of Postgraduate Medicine and Allied Health
Postgraduate medical courses and non-clinical allied health courses are offered in a separate school from the clinical medical degree. The School of Postgradaute Medicine and Allied Health offers postgraduate Master of Surgery and Master of Medicine programmes aimed at overseas-qualified doctors preparing for the General Medical Council's Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board in order to practice in the UK.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
School of Education
The Department of Education has two aspects, research and vocational: it conducts research into education and school provision, and also maintains various PGCE courses for teacher training. The Department of Education has been home to some of the most prominent educationalists in Britain, including the late Chris Woodhead (former head of Ofsted) and Anthony O'Hear (director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy). Its postgraduate certificate in education – which deals with both the state and the independent sector – is accredited with Qualified Teacher Status which means that it also qualifies graduates to teach in the state sector.
School of Business
The University of Buckingham has a business school<ref name="buckingham.ac.uk">Template:Cite web</ref> which offers a range of undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications for students.
The dean of the school is Debarpita Bardhan-Correia.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> A range of undergraduate and postgraduate business, entrepreneurship, accounting and finance degrees are offered by the Business School.<ref name="buckingham.ac.uk"/>
There are a number of lecturers including many BLEU (Buckingham Lean Enterprise Unit)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> certified ones, which are individuals who have completed a MSc with the university since 1999. There are also a number of lecturers who are CIM certified.
Vinson Centre for Economics and Entrepreneurship
On 28 November 2018 the University of Buckingham opened the Vinson Building, a multi-purposed facility for use by Buckingham's students and the local community. The university's Business Enterprise undergraduates and businesses that are members of Buckinghamshire Business First use the Buckingham Enterprise Hub, which is located in the Vinson Building.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Degrees
The university offers traditional degrees over a shorter than usual time-frame. Students at Buckingham study for eight terms over two years, rather than nine terms over three, which (with extra teaching) fits a three-year degree into two years. (The MBChB course lasts 4.5 years.)<ref name=MBChB>MB ChB Course Template:Snd University of Buckingham. Retrieved May 2016</ref>
Because Buckingham's degrees take two years to complete, students view its degrees as cost-effective compared to other UK university courses, once the income from an extra year's employment is taken into account.Template:R In some subject areas, notably Humanities, the university is now offering its degrees over different time-scales, i.e., the 2-year 'intensive' model, working the extra summer term per year, and the traditional 3-year model with the usual summer break each year.
External degrees and validation
The university awards undergraduate and graduate (Masters/MBA) degrees to students who have studied at the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The university validated courses in medicine at Medipathways College, a small private college based in London. Medipathways operates dentistry and medicine courses. In late 2014 Medipathways was found by the Higher Education Quality Assurance Agency 'to be at serious risks of failure'; the university disagreed with the assessment.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The company was wound up in September 2019.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Research
The Humanities Research Institute includes academics working in a range of disciplines, particularly military history, security studies, political history, the history of art, 19th-century literature and social history.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Alan Smithers runs the Centre for Education and Employment Research (CEER), from within the School of Humanities.<ref>Leaders of the pack;Interview;Pamela Robinson;Alan Smithers;People;Briefing, TES, 11 May 2008</ref><ref>Alan Smithers: declaration of independence , The Guardian, 7 September 2004</ref>
From the English department, John Drew runs Dickens Journals Online, the project which has put the whole of Dickens's journalistic output on free-access on the web.<ref>Calling all Dickens detectives, The Guardian, 4 August 2011</ref>
Reputation and rankings
Template:Infobox UK university rankings The university was awarded the Times/Sunday Times University of the Year for Teaching Quality 2015–16 in 2015, at which time it ranked 38th in the Times/Sunday Times league table.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The university is not listed in the Guardian University Guide.<ref name="Guardian University Guide">Template:Cite news</ref> The Complete University Guide has seen a steady decline in Buckingham's ranking, from 20th in 2011 to 107th in the 2020 table. The University of Buckingham had fallen again to 123rd out of 130 universities in the University League Tables 2022.<ref name="Complete University Guide">Template:Cite web</ref> It was ranked 17th for graduate employability in 2015.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It was ranked joint second for student satisfaction in the 2018 National Student Survey,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> however a fall in satisfaction in the 2019 National Student Survey saw it fall out of the top ten.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Departments
The league tables of individual subjects in The Guardian University Guide 2020, produced by The Guardian newspaper, ranked Buckingham 10th (out of 101) for Accounting and Finance, 18th (out of 119) for Business Management and Marketing, 6th (out of 71) for Economics, 12th (out of 105) for English and Creative Writing, 28th (out of 101) for Law, and 51st (out of 116) for Psychology. It is noted as teaching Computer Science and Information Systems, History, History of Art, Medicine, and Politics, but not ranked in the subjects.<ref name="Guardian University Guide"/>
The subject league tables in the Complete University Guide 2020 ranked Buckingham 79th for Accounting and Finance, 76th for Business & Management, 82nd for Computer Science, 52nd for Economics, 73rd for English, 49th for Law, 73rd for Politics, and 92nd for Psychology.<ref name="Complete University Guide"/> in 2022 Economics had fallen to 69th.
Quality assurance
Buckingham has been reviewed voluntarily by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) from 2001.<ref name="THE QAA">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The QAA indicated it had "limited confidence" in the university's management of academic standards in 2008, as the external academic advisory council had "come to see itself as part of the Buckingham academic community" and "serious concerns about academic standards [had] been flagged by external examiners".<ref name="THE QAA"/> The university was subsequently judged to "meet UK expectations" in its 2012 review.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2015 the QAA found that Buckingham had failed to follow the university's regulations on academic misconduct with respect to possible plagiarism by students.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> An "alternative providers" (i.e. private universities) review by the QAA in 2017 found again that Buckingham met UK expectations in all areas.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In June 2017 the university was judged by the Teaching Excellence Framework panel to be "of the highest quality found in the UK" and given a gold award.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In December 2022, England’s higher education regulator OfS (Office for Students) fined the university for publishing its 2019 audited accounts two years late, citing a "“significant regulatory risk”. The auditors of the accounts noted "“the existence of a material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt about the group’s and the university’s ability to continue as a going concern”. The 2020 and 2021 accounts had to that date not been published.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
University of Buckingham Press
The University of Buckingham Press publishes in the areas of law, education, and business through its journal articles, books, reports and other material. In 2006 the press relaunched The Denning Law Journal<ref name="denninglawjournal.com">Template:Cite web</ref> and it is now available in print and its whole archive is online.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
It also publishes three other journals: The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Journal of Prediction Markets,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and The Journal of Gambling Business and Economics.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It has a co-publishing arrangement with Policy Exchange<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> for its Foundations series.
Notable alumni
Template:More citations needed Template:See also
-
Brigadier John Mark Lancaster, Baron Lancaster of Kimbolton, graduated with a BSc in Business Studies
-
Brandon Lewis, former MP, graduated with a BSc Economics and LLB Hons (Law)
-
Mariano Hugo, Prince of Windisch-Graetz graduated in 1975 with a degree in philosophy, economics and political science
-
Susanne Klatten graduated with a BSc Business Studies
-
Spanish racing driver Marc Gené graduated with an economics degree and a master's degree
-
7th Vice President of Ghana, Mahamudu Bawumia, graduated in 1987 with a degree in economics
-
Michael Ellis, former MP, graduated with a degree in Law in 1993
-
Guy Opperman, former MP for Hexham, has an Honours Degree in Law<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
-
Glenys Hanna Martin, Minister of Education of the Bahamas from 2021, obtained an LLB in 1985
.jpg){kind=link}
British alumni include Bader Ben Hirsi, playwright and director;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Brandon Lewis, former MP for Great Yarmouth and former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Mark Lancaster, Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton, former Armed Forces minister;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Graham Roos, appointed in 2011 as the university's first Creative Artist in Residence;Template:Citation needed James Henderson (former CEO of Bell Pottinger);Template:Citation needed Michael Ellis, former MP for Northampton, former Minister for the Cabinet Office and former Paymaster General.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
International alumni include Anifah Aman, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Malaysia from April 2009 to May 2018.Template:Citation needed Mohammadin Ketapi, a government minister in Malaysia;Template:Citation needed Pravind Jugnauth, MP in the National Assembly of Mauritius, former Deputy Prime Minister;Template:Citation needed Mahamudu Bawumia, former Vice-President of Ghana;Template:Citation needed Alexander Kwamina Afenyo-Markin, the Member of the Parliament of Effutu (Ghana parliament constituency);Template:Citation needed Olagunsoye Oyinlola, former Governor of Osun State, Nigeria;Template:Citation needed racing driver Marc Gené, winner of the 2009 Le Mans 24-Hour Race;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Mariano Hugo, Prince of Windisch-Graetz, current head of the Austria-Italian, House of Windisch-Graetz;Template:Citation needed Susanne Klatten, BMW heiress;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Yosef Elron, a current Justice at the Supreme Court of Israel.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Better source needed
Notable academics
- Past
- Norman P. Barry (1944–2008), political philosopher<ref>Professor Norman Barry (obituary), The Daily Telegraph, 12 November 2008 Template:Subscription required</ref>
- Anne Beloff-Chain (1921–1991), biochemist<ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref>
- Mark Blaug (1927–2011), economist
- Bruce Charlton, Visiting Professor of Theoretical Medicine (retired)
- Olufemi Elias, lecturer in law (retired)
- Robert Garner, political scientist
- John Jewkes (1902–1988), economist
- Geraint Jones, dean of School of Education, 2014–2018
- Terence Kealey (born 1952), former Vice-Chancellor
- Andrew George Lehmann (1922–2006), Professor of European Studies
- Ram Mudambi, lecturer in business strategy
- Dennis O'Keeffe (1939–2014), Professor of Social Science
- Sir Alan Peacock (1922–2014), economist
- Robert A. Pearce (born 1951), Professor in Law 1990–2003
- Anthony Seldon, Vice-Chancellor, 2015–2020
- Nicolaus Tideman (born 1943), economist
- Chris Woodhead (1946–2015), professor of education
- Sir David Yardley (1929–2014), Rank Foundation Professor of Law 1980–1982
- Present
- Susanna Avery-Quash, art historian
- Hugh Belsey, art historian
- Lloyd Clark, military historian
- Saul David, military historian
- John M. L. Drew, Professor of English Literature
- Gert-Rudolf Flick, Visiting Professor in art history
- Simon Sebag Montefiore, Visiting Professor in humanities
- Julian Morris, Visiting Professor in economics
- Anthony O'Hear, Professor of Philosophy
- Jane Ridley, professor of modern history
- Karol Sikora, Professor of Medicine
- Alan Smithers, Director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research
- James Tooley (born 1959), Vice-Chancellor
- Neema Parvini, literature scholar and YouTuber
Notes
References
External links
Template:Universities in the United Kingdom Template:Universities and colleges in South East England