A £400 million campus development programme may help to boost applications. The striking new £57 million Ravelin Sports Centre at the heart of the campus will be ready for the start of the 2022-23 academic year, and the university is spending another £135 million on a 12-storey academic building in the city centre with large, flexible spaces for teaching, research and collaboration, which is due to open in 2024. A new £7 million Centre for Creative and Immersive Extended Reality (CCIXR) opened in 2022, bringing together an unprecedented variety of XR technologies, enhancing the work of the Future Technology Centre, which opened in 2019.

Much of the university’s recent investment has been on simulated facilities to give students hands-on experience to prepare them for careers. Students on healthcare courses, for example, learn to dispense medicines in a pharmacy and to treat NHS patients at a dental clinic. The ability to generate ideas and develop creative solutions of benefit to society and the economy is one of the ten “hallmarks of a Portsmouth graduate” that will apply to the new intake.

A good performance in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework has moved Portsmouth into the top half of our research quality index. More than three quarters of its work was considered world-leading or internationally excellent, the top two categories. Portsmouth entered more than 600 academics, twice the number involved in the previous national assessment in 2014. 

The university has been branching out in the south of England. A University Centre in Basingstoke will offer professionally focused higher-education courses in partnership with the University of Reading, and a partnership agreement was signed this year with Ryde town council on the Isle of Wight. There have also been talks with Waltham Forest council on the establishment of a London campus in the borough in the northeast of the capital.

Three new degrees were launched this year, in primary education, global communication, and criminology and environmental justice. Portsmouth’s 19 degree apprenticeship programmes have seen considerable growth recently, but are expected to stabilise at 1,000 apprentices in 2022-23.

More than a third of the undergraduates qualify for financial support, which includes a £750-a-year bursary for all students with a household income of less than £25,000. There are also scholarships to encourage progression to postgraduate courses where this will help a student’s career plans. Portsmouth Football Club contributes one scholarship of £3,000 a year for students from low-income homes in the city and the Isle of Wight to raise aspirations and awareness of higher education.

Nine out of ten undergraduates are from non-selective state schools and Portsmouth is in the top 20 for the proportion who are white working-class males, the most underrepresented group in higher education. The university set up a multi-academy trust in 2022, bringing together two primary schools in the city and one in nearby Gosport. 

The university has pioneered new approaches to student wellbeing. Academic staff, including personal tutors, are trained in mental health awareness and how best to support their students. Portsmouth was the first university to use WhatsUp?, a mental health app that promotes better communication between students and pastoral services. A student leadership programme develops resilience and community-building skills, encouraging students to make a contribution to an environment that helps every student to flourish.

Most of the university’s residential accommodation is close to the central Guildhall campus, although many students live in neighbouring Southsea. The university has almost 3,500 residential places — enough to guarantee accommodation to all new students who apply by the deadline and make Portsmouth their firm choice.

A £6.5 million student centre includes alcohol-free areas. Facilities at the new sports centre include an eight-lane 25m swimming pool, an eight-court sports hall, a 175-station fitness suite, squash courts and a ski simulator, while outdoor facilities are at the Langstone Sports Village, three miles from the city centre and reached via the university bus service. The university’s seaside location provides an excellent base for watersports and other leisure activities, while the city’s nightlife is lively.