London South Bank University celebrates 125 years of enlightenment journey

One of the oldest and largest universities in London celebrates 125 years of its impressive milestones in the history of vocational and professional education.

London South Bank University (LSBU), recently named University of the Year for Graduate Employment by The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018 and among the UK’s top 20 universities to study law by the Guardian, marked 125 years of its successful journey.

LSBU, originally the Borough Polytechnic Institute, laid down its roots in south London in 1892 and has been improving the lives of students, businesses, and the local community ever since. It is one of the city’s oldest universities.

It was founded with the aim to promote industrial skill, general knowledge, health, and wellbeing to young men and women belonging to the poorer classes of south east London.

Over the past 125 years, the university has expanded and grown into one of London’s largest universities, offering vocationally-relevant, accredited, and professionally recognised education and support to students from the UK and overseas.

In the inaugural 2017 Teaching Excellence Framework assessment which ranked the quality of undergraduate teaching across UK universities and applied either a bronze, silver or gold ranking, LSBU was awarded a silver ranking.

From providing a safe haven as a community centre during the First and Second World Wars, to attracting one-quarter of students from the local area in its annual intake nowadays.

The university used to manufacture munitions and gas masks for the war effort and ran courses for the army during the First World War and served hot meals a day to the homeless of the wretched city of Southwark during the Second World War.

LSBU instruction is given in arts and creative industries, applied science, built environment and architecture, business, engineering, health and social care, and law and social science. Renowned figures held public lectures in the university by the likes of George Bernard Shaw, J. A. Hobson, Henry M. Stanley, and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Based in the London Borough of Southwark, near the South Bank of the River Thames, from which it takes its name, the university has 17,565 students and 1,700 staff.

89 percent of LSBU students are from the UK, 4 percent from the EU, and 7 percent from non-EU overseas. Females make 59 percent of the total students at LSBU, according to the university’s official website data relevant to the2015/16 academic year. 54 percent of the student population are from ethnic minorities.

While reflecting on its successes over the past 125 years, LSBU also looks forward to exciting and ambitious times ahead. It has set itself a target to be London’s top Modern University by 2020 and strives to continue transforming lives.