At the Avery Hill campus on the outskirts of southeast London, a makeover of the Victorian mansion adds three clinical skills laboratories and a new library. It enables student nurses, midwives and paramedics to train for real-life emergencies using augmented-reality technology and lifelike manikins in simulated hospital wards and consulting rooms. Three manikins were built for the university and the most complex, Lucina, blinks, breathes, has radial pulses and can even simulate birth.  

Greenwich was awarded silver in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) for investing in high-quality physical and digital resources to enhance learning. Assessors praised course design and assessment practices that stretch students, and noted that personalised provision was rewarded with good engagement and commitment to learning. Lecture-capture facilities are in place, although the main teaching model is face-to-face, with some lectures delivered online.  

The Greenwich campus occupies a World Heritage site overlooking the Thames, with the completion in 2018 of a £23 million refurbishment of the historic Dreadnought building centralising many services, including the students’ union, a bar, student and academic services, a gym, media suite, radio station and flexible teaching spaces.

The prizewinning Stockwell Street development, also in Greenwich, was designed partly by the university’s specialists in architecture and has a landscaped roof terrace, large architecture studio, model-making workshop, and television and sound studios as well as the main library and other facilities.

At Chatham, in Kent, Greenwich shares the Medway campus with the University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University. The schools of pharmacy, science and engineering are based at Medway and the campus also has nursing and some business students. The listed redbrick buildings, a former Royal Navy base, house a student hub with study spaces as well as a restaurant, bar and nightclub.

Greenwich moves 19 places up our research rankings to 74th place after an improved performance in the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021) compared with the previous assessment in 2014. Double the number of academic staff were entered (400) and agriculture, building and food science produced some of the best results.

The Natural Resources Institute at Medway was awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 2019 for developing smart solutions to tackle pests that cause plague, famine and disease.

Through its partnership with SEGi College in Malaysia and FPT University in Vietnam, Greenwich is broadening its course offering at outposts in Kuala Lumpur, Subang Jaya and Ho Chi Minh City, among other Asian locations. New options for degrees include: accounting and finance; human resource management; graphic and digital design and computing. At home, food science and nutrition joins the curriculum from September 2023. 

The portfolio of degree apprenticeships spans 20 programmes across the faculties of engineering and science, education, health and human sciences, and liberal arts and science. By 2023 Greenwich expects to have 500 degree apprentices, one of the larger contingents in British higher education. Graduate employability initiatives include opportunities to interact with employers at the campus and through virtual events such as hackathons, a mentoring scheme and networking events. High-quality internships and other opportunities are also available. Pfizer, Northern Trust, BAE Systems, Soho House, the Dorchester and Warner Media are among companies tapping into the university’s talent stream.

Abiy Ahmed, a Greenwich graduate, became prime minister of Ethiopia aged 42 in 2018. Africa’s youngest leader won the Nobel peace prize in 2019 for his efforts to achieve international co-operation. The university has a second Nobel laureate in the late Dr Charles Kao, who won the prize for physics in 2009 for his work in fibre optics. Baroness (Doreen) Lawrence of Clarendon, the mother of the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence, killed in a racially motivated attack, is another former student, noted for her campaign for justice and equality of opportunity.

The university has a strong record in our social inclusion table. With 55.3 per cent of undergraduates from ethnic minorities, Greenwich is in the top 25 universities in the country on this measure. More than 57 per cent of students are the first in their family to go to university, putting Greenwich in 13th place. 

There are gyms at all three campuses. Sports halls at Avery Hill and Medway are suitable for badminton, basketball, netball, futsal and volleyball. Avery Hill’s facilities include four grass football pitches, a 3G pitch for football and rugby, a hockey pitch, tennis courts, and an indoor 3G training facility that is shared with Charlton FC.First-years are guaranteed a room in halls of residence if they apply before the August 21 deadline, although latecomers can usually be accommodated too.