University of Buckingham

University of Buckingham
Motto	Alis Volans Propriis (Latin)
Motto in English	"Flying On Our Own Wings"
Established	1983 – gained University Status by Royal Charter 1976 – University College [1]
Type	Private
Vice-Chancellor	Alistair Alcock (acting)
Admin. staff	97 academic, 103 support[2]
Students	1507[2]
Undergraduates	1017[2]
Postgraduates	490[2]
Location	Buckingham, England 51°59′45″N 0°59′31″W / 51.99583°N 0.99194°W / 51.99583; -0.99194Coordinates: 51°59′45″N 0°59′31″W / 51.99583°N 0.99194°W / 51.99583; -0.99194
Website	www.buckingham.ac.uk

The University of Buckingham (UB) is a private university located in Buckingham, Buckinghamshire, England, on the banks of the River Great Ouse. It was originally founded as the University College at Buckingham in 1973 and received its Royal Charter from the Queen in 1983.

The university's funding regime is not like that of other UK universities, but rather is on the model of many US universities, as it does not receive state funding via HEFCE. It has formal charity status as a non-profit making institution dedicated to the ends of research and education.^[3][4][5]

Buckingham offers bachelor's degrees, master's degrees and doctoral degrees through five 'schools' (or faculties) of study.

Santander Universities UK signed an agreement^[6] with the university in December 2013 to provide scholarships, travel bursaries and internships.^[7]

Some of the founding academics migrated from the University of Oxford,^[8] 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:

"Is it now time to examine the possibility of creating at least one university in this country on the pattern of [the] great private foundations in the USA."^[9]

Three London conferences followed which explored this idea.^[10]

Subsequently, the university was incorporated as the University College of Buckingham in 1976 and received its Royal Charter from the Queen in 1983.

Its development was influenced by the libertarian Institute of Economic Affairs, in particular, Harry Ferns and Ralph Harris, heads of the Institute. In keeping with its adherence to a libertarian philosophy, the university's foundation-stone was laid by Margaret Thatcher, who was also to be the university's Chancellor (nominal and ceremonial head) between 1993 and 1998.

The university's first three Vice-Chancellors were Lord Beloff (1913–1999), former Gladstone Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford; Sir Alan Peacock, the economist, founder of the Economics department at the University of York, and Fellow of the British Academy; and Sir Richard Luce, now Lord Luce, the former Minister for the Arts.

A weir and mill that fall within Buckingham University's Hunter Street campus.

Town Mill

Near the centre of the town of Buckingham is the river-side 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: the Reception and central administration; the Anthony de Rothchild building (which contains Business and Economics); the Humanities Library; and also some of the student accommodation, looking northwards across the river. Prebend House, a recently restored Georgian house, contains parts of the department of Politics and also Economics. 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.

Overlooking this site, on the hill above, is the extensive Chandos Building. This complex contains the main teaching areas for English Literature, English Language, Modern Foreign Languages, and the Foundation programmes. It also houses the Ian-Fairburn Lecture Theatre. Adjacent to the Chandos Building, is the Department of Education. This has both a research arm, and also a teacher training (PGCE) faculty.

Further on, up the hill, on the London Road, is another element of the campus, in particular the School of Law, 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. Teaching on some master's degrees takes place in London, in Grosvenor Place, at the home of one its partner institutions: the European School of Economics, and some Life Science programmes are also run in Central London, in conjunction with Medipathways.

ChancellorEdit

The immediate past- Chancellor is Sir Martin Jacomb, Chairman of Canary Wharf Group PLC, and Share PLC (in Aylesbury), and the director of other companies including Oxford Playhouse Trust. He was Chairman of Prudential PLC from 1995 to 2000 and last year retired from the boards of Rio Tinto Group and Marks & Spencer. Former Chancellors of the university have been Margaret Thatcher who retired in 1999, and Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone.

Lord Tanlaw was appointed to succeed Sir Martin as Chancellor in May 2010. He stepped down in 2013.^[11]

Vice-ChancellorEdit

The current Vice-Chancellor is Terence Kealey, formerly of the Department of Clinical Biochemistry at Cambridge University, who has held the post since April 2001. Kealey is known for his research challenging the idea that education and science are public goods needing public subsidies. He wrote an academic book on the subject in 1996, "The Economic Laws of Scientific Research", which he repackaged and updated for a general audience in 2008 as "Sex, Science and Profits".^[12]

In February 2010, Kealey proposed the establishment of a new independent university, modelled on American liberal arts colleges, that would concentrate on undergraduate teaching rather than research.^[13][14] The plan is currently being considered by the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), whose 243 members include independent schools such as Eton College, Winchester College and St Paul's School, London. Kealey believes that complaints about impersonal teaching and oversized classes at many traditional universities mean there will be strong demand for higher education with staff-student ratios similar to that provided by independent secondary schools.

TeachingEdit

The university's five schools are Law, Humanities, Arts and Languages, Business, and Science and Medicine. Each of these is presided over by a Dean, or in the case of the School of Law, by a temporary Dean since February 2013.

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 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 is home to some of the most prominent educationalists in Britain, including Chris Woodhead (former head of Ofsted), Anthony O'Hear (director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy), and Alan Smithers. 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.

The university was created as a liberal arts college, and the major humanities subjects such as history and politics are offered with economics as a degree in international studies. Economics, however, is available as a stand-alone degree. So too is English literature, as a single honours subject, and in combinations with English Language, or Journalism, and related areas. The Professor of Economics, and Dean of Humanities, Martin Ricketts, is the chair of the Institute of Economic Affairs Academic Advisory Council.

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.^[15]

School of MedicineEdit

The School of Medicine offers postgraduate MD programmes for qualified doctors in a range of specialisations. From January 2015 it will also offer an undergraduate medical qualification (MBChB)^[16] and it has started accepting its first batch of undergraduates at a cost of £35,000 per year.^[17] The university accepts international and EU students. The school will be known as University of Buckingham Medical School and will be in partnership with Milton Keynes NHS Trust.^[17]

The School has had several associations with the alternative medicine community. The School ran a Diploma course in integrated medicine that was later withdrawn under pressure from David Colquhoun,^[18] a campaigner against pseudoscience and alternative medicine. The Dean of the School, Karol Sikora, was a Foundation Fellow of Prince Charles' now-defunct alternative medicine lobby group the Foundation for Integrated Health^[19] 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.^[18] 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.^[18] Andrew Miles is on the scientific council of the College of Medicine^[20] an alternative medicine lobby group linked to the Prince of Wales.^[21] Sikora is also a "professional member" of this organisation.^[22]

Professor of Theoretical Medicine at the school is Bruce Charlton, controversial editor of the journal Medical Hypotheses, who was dismissed as editor by publisher Elsevier^[23][24] over the publication of a paper by AIDS denialists claiming that HIV is not responsible for AIDS^[25] and concerns over the lack of peer-review at the journal.^[26][27]

DegreesEdit

The university offers traditional degrees over a shorter 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. From September 2009, tuition fees for full-time UK and EU undergraduate students have been £8,040 per year for these two-year bachelor's degree programmes. For non-EU students, fees are equivalent to £13,500 p.a. Because Buckingham's degrees take two years to complete, the university views its courses as cost-effective compared to ordinary UK university courses, once living expenses and the income from an extra year's employment are taken into account.

External degreesEdit

The university awards undergraduate and graduate (Masters/MBA) degrees to students who have studied at the European School of Economics and at the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology.

ResearchEdit

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.^{[28][self-published source?]}

Alan Smithers runs the Centre for Education and Employment Research, from within the Department of Education.^{[citation needed]} This has produced a series of reports on the fundamentals of secondary and primary education.^{[importance?]}

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.

The research unit devoted to contemporary Security Studies is run by Antony Glees.^{[importance?]}

The Guardian University Guide for 2013 ranked Buckingham in 16th position out of 120 UK higher education institutes.^[31] The Complete University Guide for 2014 ranked Buckingham in 57th place out of 124 UK higher education institutes.^[32] The Times Good University Guide 2013 ranked Buckingham in its league tables in 41st position out of 120 UK higher education institutes. The Sunday Times University Guide for 2013 ranked Buckingham in its league tables in 61st (2012: 56th) position out of 122 UK higher education institutes.

DepartmentsEdit

The most recent league tables of individual university departments in The Guardian University Guide 2013, produced by The Guardian newspaper, ranked the Business department as 28th (out of 116) in the country, English as 14th (out of 106), Economics as 17th (out of 70), Psychology (20 out of 109), and Law as 30th (out of 97). It is not represented in any other field.^[33]

Global rankingEdit

Buckingham does not rank in the top 400 universities globally as rated by Times Higher Education,^[34] nor does it appear in the top 700 universities ranked globally by Quacquarelli Symonds,^[35] nor does it rank in the top 500 universities rated by the Academic Ranking of World Universities.^[36] However, it is ranked at 4,084 out of 11,998 universities in the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities.^[37]

QualityEdit

The university's Royal Charter, unlike those of other universities, provides for three sovereign bodies, the third one (in addition to the usual Council and Senate) being the Academic Advisory Council, which is a group of external academics that audits the academic staff.^{[citation needed]}

When the national Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) was created, the university felt it should join, even though it perceives itself as markedly different from the state-funded universities that the QAA otherwise audits.^{[citation needed]} The university got "broad confidence" (the highest band) in its first QAA audit in 2003,^[38] but "limited confidence" in its last QAA audit in 2008.^[39]

This poor assessment lead to criticism of the QAA by prominent Buckingham academics^[40][41] which were rebuffed by the QAA.^[42] A 2012 QAA Institutional Review found that the

"Academic standards at the university meet UK expectations for threshold standards. The quality of student learning opportunities at the university meets UK expectations. [and] The enhancement of student learning opportunities at the university meets UK expectations."

^[43] It is to note that educational oversight is distinguished from an institutional review, since the quality of degrees remains "limited in confidence", while the structure of the institution meets UK expectation.^[44]

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^[45] and it is now available in print and its whole archive is online.^[46]

It also publishes three other journals: The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics,^[47] The Journal of Prediction Markets,^[48] and The Journal of Gambling Business and Economics.^[49] It has a co-publishing arrangement with The Policy Exchange^[50] for its Foundations series.

Alumni include Bader Ben Hirsi, playwright and director; Brandon Lewis, MP for Great Yarmouth; Mark Lancaster, MP for Milton Keynes North; Chris de Lapuente, Global President and CEO of Sephora; and Graham Roos, appointed in 2011 as the University's first Creative Artist in Residence.

International alumni include Pravind Jugnauth, MP in the National Assembly of Mauritius, former Deputy Prime Minister, and the leader of one of Mauritius's main parties, the Militant Socialist Movement; Olagunsoye Oyinlola, former Governor of Osun State, Nigeria, racing driver Marc Gené, winner of the Le Mans 24-Hour Race in 2009; and Tun Mohammed Hanif bin Omar, Deputy Chairman of Genting Berhad, and former Inspector-General of the Royal Malaysian Police.

• University of Buckingham website

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