Study in Preston: the university and the further education colleges

A university city with an unusually old lineage and three substantial colleges alongside it.

Preston is a study city out of proportion to its size. It has a large university immediately north of the commercial centre, a general further education college, a sixth form college, and a substantial land-based college on the northern edge of the district. Between them they put a very large student population into a compact city, and that shows in the retail, the food trade and the evening economy.

This section records what each institution is and where it sits. It publishes no course lists, entry requirements or fees, all of which change annually and all of which the institutions themselves publish properly.

The university

The University of Central Lancashire is one of the larger UK universities by student numbers and traces its origin to an institution founded in Preston in 1828 for the diffusion of useful knowledge. That is a genuinely long lineage, and it connects the university directly to the same civic impulse that built the Harris with a library inside it.

Its campus sits immediately north of the city centre and has been substantially rebuilt under the masterplan, which changed the pedestrian route between the centre and Moor Park.

The colleges

Preston's College is the general further education college, Cardinal Newman College is the sixth form college, and Myerscough College is the land-based and sports college north of the city. The three cover quite different ground and are not alternatives to each other.

Myerscough in particular is worth knowing about beyond education: it is a substantial land-based institution with an agricultural, equine and sports remit, and it is one of the larger such colleges in the country.

• University / 01

  University of Central Lancashire

  Origin traced to an institution founded in Preston in 1828.

• FE / 02

  Preston's College

  The city's general further education college.

• Sixth form / 03

  Cardinal Newman College

  Sixth form college in the city.

• Land-based / 04

  Myerscough College

  Land-based, equine and sports college north of the city.

What a student population does to the city

The most visible effect is on Friargate and the streets between the campus and Fishergate, which carry the independent food, drink and evening trade. That side of the centre is busy in the evening and quiet in the day, and the reverse is true of the shopping streets. Anyone trying to understand why one half of Preston's centre feels different from the other should start with the campus at the northern end.

It also underpins the city's cheap independent retail and coffee, since small units at affordable rents plus a young population is the combination that supports them.

A prospectus is rewritten every year

This section carries no course list, and the reason is not caution: a prospectus is rewritten every year by the institution that owns it, and a second-hand copy of one is wrong within months of being useful. Fees, entry requirements, term dates and league positions belong to the same class. What the sheets below record instead is where each institution sits, what kind of thing it is, and how the three of them relate to the city — facts with a shelf life measured in decades.

What it records is what each institution is, what it is known for, and where in the city it stands.

Where the institutions sit

Three of the four are inside the city and one is well outside it. The university occupies a campus immediately north of the city centre, close enough that its buildings and the commercial centre run into one another with no clear edge. The two sixth-form and further education colleges are also within the built-up area, one north of the centre and one to the east. Myerscough is different: it is a land-based college on a rural campus north of the city, and reaching it means leaving Preston.

That geography is the reason the university dominates the section. A campus that has no boundary with the city centre puts its population into the same streets, shops and transport as everybody else, which is why the effect described further down is visible in Preston in a way it is not in cities where the university sits apart.