The institution has seven campuses, reaching from Ambleside, on Lake Windermere in the Lake District National Park — which offers the UK’s biggest programme of outdoor education courses plus conservation and forestry degrees — to its newest campus in Canary Wharf, east London, its base for health, education and business courses.

The main campus in Lancaster is set in parkland a short walk from the city centre and caters for courses in education, health, sport and business. The £9 million Sentamu teaching and learning building has a 200-seat lecture theatre and the restaurant has panoramic views towards Morecambe Bay. The library has bookable study rooms, individual booths and laptops for loan. Teaching facilities include sport performance labs, ambulance simulators and teacher training rooms.

The Workington campus provides graduate courses in decommissioning, reprocessing and managing nuclear waste and has specialist facilities. The university is a partner in the National College for Nuclear and the Project Academy for Sellafield. 

The Fusehill campus in Carlisle is in a former First World War military hospital and offers courses in health, science, conservation, education, business, law and policing. A second site in Carlisle, close to Hadrian’s Wall, is home to the university’s Institute of Arts.

Applications increased by about 13 per cent in 2021’s admissions round, after six consecutive years of decreasing demand for places at Cumbria. New student enrolments also rose in 2021, by 7 per cent, to reach their highest level in five years. 

Eight new degree options launched in the 2022-23 – including psychology with counselling and psychotherapy, outdoor education (accelerated degree), and graphic design with a work placement. Four more options join the curriculum from September 2023: animation and visual effects, commercial photography, education studies with placement (accelerated degree), and youth work in the digital age.

Cumbria was one of a small number of universities rated bronze in the Teaching Excellence Framework in 2017. It was marked down for a low graduate employment rate in high-skilled jobs, but the university pointed out that such roles are in short supply in the northwest compared with the national average.  The new Barrow campus should in time contribute to improved employability in the region. 

The university ranked in the middle reaches of our graduate prospects measure in 2021 but has fallen 25 places to 98= in our latest analysis of the numbers in highly skilled work or undertaking further study 15 months after graduation. 

Cumbria's portfolio of degree apprenticeships has grown to 14, with about 1,700 trainees on courses in health, business and industry. Cumbria delivers degree apprenticeships and a supply chain academy for BAE Systems, and project management programmes for Sellafield Ltd. Other partners include Defra, the NHS, the BBC and Rolls-Royce. 

Cumbria has maintained its 124th place in our research rankings. Work submitted on history of art, art and design, and geography produced the best results. 

In our measures of student satisfaction — derived from the National Student Survey — Cumbria has fallen 15 places to 99= for teaching quality and 111th for the wider undergraduate experience. 

Cumbria is in the top 50 according to our analysis of measures of social inclusion (47th). About one in five admissions in 2021 met one or more of the eligibility criteria to be made a contextual offer — at the lower end of the Ucas tariff range for the course. As Cumbria broadens its contextual data to include carers, estranged students and those who qualify for free school meals, it expects 25-30 per cent of offers to qualify for lower entry requirements in September 2023. 

Sports facilities are available at the Lancaster, Carlisle and Ambleside campuses — ranging from a fitness suite, sports hall and swimming pool in Lancaster to a large sports hall and fitness facilities in Carlisle and a gym with classes and small group training in Ambleside.

Accommodation is guaranteed to first-years within Cumbria’s stock of about 500 bed spaces — some housed within attractive stone cottages at the Ambleside campus.