Talk:Victoria University of Manchester/Archive 1


 * On March 5, 2003 it was announced that the University is to merge with UMIST in the autumn of 2004, to form the largest conventional university in Britain.

Largest? 18,000 from Manchester plus, what, about 6,500 from UMIST still doesn't come close to the 115,000 at London. Or is London somehow not conventional? Marnanel 18:13, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * London's not conventional because it's a federal university made up of different institutions. The new University of Manchester will be one big institution (I guess - I didn't write that).
 * Yes that's the idea behind the claim anyway. Also the Open University does not count as conventional as most o the students study from home. Billlion 23:55, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I've just checked the list of UK universities by number of students at the Higher Education Statistics Agency website here: and it says that Leeds Metropolitan University is the biggest conventional university (using 'conventional' in the sense given above). It has 52,275 students as opposed to 39,985 for the merged Manchester University. However, some of the LMU students are FE rather than HE students. If Manchester are basing their claim to be biggest purely on the total number of HE students, then it may be true after all -  The University of Manchester has the most HE students (39,985) ahead of Leeds University, which has 36,205 HE students.  Interesting the jump in numbers, though. As Marnane pointed out, the combined size of the old UofM plus UMIST was about 24,500. How come it is 39,985 now? Presumably the basis of calculation has been changed significantly.[Dodo64] 24 March 2007
 * Quite right. Only HE students count when comparing universities. There is also perhaps an issue of counting students or full-time equivalent students. So yes the 40k He students does seem to be the basis of the claim, plus the OU is not conventional and the U of London is not one University (any more than the University of California is). As for the jump in numbers post merger I only know that the total first year intake in the merged School of Mathematics was much bigger than the sum of the previous first year intakes from the former institutions. Billlion 16:50, 24 March 2007 (UTC)