How do the Colleges operate at York?
Why colleges? | What colleges? | As people | As buildings | What else? | Internationally |
Why are there colleges at the University of York?
The University of York is largely residential. While you are here, you will find that there is a lot more on offer than lectures and examinations: you will live, eat, sleep, make friends, and take part in many activities - some new to you and some not - in ways that form a parallel life alongside the one you lead in your subject department. The way in which you arrange all this is entirely up to you. Some of it may operate at University level (representing the University in a sport, for example), but most students find that most of it is centred on their college.
The University of York has had a collegiate structure since its foundation in 1963.
Every student, and every member of staff, at the University of York is a member of one of the colleges. Once you join a college, you remain a member (unless you find that you want to change to another). That is, in a sense, you remain a member for life, as you will always receive a welcome in College if you return.
What colleges are there at the University of York?
See here for a map of the Heslington site, showing the locations of all colleges.
- Alcuin College - up on the hill behind the Seebohm Rowntree (Health Sciences) building.
- Derwent College - next to Heslington Hall, at the head of the West Lake.
- Goodricke College - recently relocated to our new campus at Heslington East.
- Halifax College - the other side of Heslington Village, but near shops and pubs.
- James College - on the West Lake, backing on to the Sports Centre and the Psychology buildings.
- Langwith College - next down the West Lake from Derwent College.
- Vanbrugh College - between the West Lake and the central Market Square (shops).
- Wentworth Graduate College - opposite James across the West Lake.
Some colleges have outposts dotted around York, most of them quite close to Heslington - such Eden's Court (Derwent) and Fairfax House (Vanbrugh).
You continue to belong to your college, no matter where you live: in college, or in one of its outposts, or in any other accommodation that you may find in York. A college is a group of people first, and a group of buildings second.
The University has recently begun a large expansion on a new site called Heslington East - adjacent to the current West site, but the other side of Heslington village. This will include an East Lake, and new department buildings that will include a new building for Computer Science to be occupied by autumn 2010; but it will also include new colleges. Goodricke College has just moved to its new site; soon, Langwith College will also move, and that will enable Derwent College to expand in its existing location. In the longer term, some new colleges will be established in Heslington East.
York colleges as groups of people
The colleges at York operate as social groups, in which staff and graduate students and undergraduate students can meet, get to know one another, and take part in communal and inter-collegiate activities.
How you use your College - what you put into it and what you get out of it - is up to you. For some students it is, more than their department, the centre of their existence. It is the place where they meet, eat, work, watch television, and sleep. For others, it is just some or none of these. All students are different. Colleges try to cater for student differences.
From the point of view of an undergraduate student, perhaps the most important point is that your college provides a student support service that is independent of the University and of your department - so, if you are having problems with your department, and you do not wish to involve the University, you can approach your college knowing that your problem will be treated with sympathy and in confidence.
The colleges vary slightly in their organisation; but, generally, in the first instance, there will be a small team of graduate students who act as College Tutors - to whom you can talk about your problem and discuss the best way of dealing with it. In some colleges, each Tutor has responsibility for a particular court or pair of courts.
There will be a Provost, and a Dean, both of whom are a members of the academic staff. The Dean is responsible for college discipline. The College Tutors or the Dean (as you wish) will mediate in the conflicts of interest that tend to arise when people share living space.
Each college is led by its Provost, and he or she represents the college in the interests of all its members.
The colleges vary in size, both in membership and in buildings. With the exception of Wentworth Graduate College, each college has about 900 Junior Members (undergraduate students), 60 Graduate Members (postgraduate students) and 160 Senior Members (academic staff, and administrative and support staff). For more on this, see 'common rooms', below. There are no single-sex colleges, although some colleges do contain some single-sex accommodation for those who prefer it.
When you apply for admission to the University, you can express a preference for a particular college. If you do not do so, you will be allocated to a college at random. Each college contains students and staff from all departments, and you will find that the students who are following the same academic programme as you include members of all colleges.
York colleges as buildings and facilities
The college buildings are known mainly as Courts, or in a few cases as Houses or Blocks, depending on their shape. (At some other universities, these may be known variously as houses or blocks or courts or courtyards or quadrangles or quads.)
As an example, here is a map of Halifax College.
Halifax College is near Heslington village, and is about ten minutes' walk from the Central Hall. It consists of student houses grouped around courtyards, ranging from 6 to 12 students per house, and accommodates 710 students in single study-bedrooms with washbasins and telephone facilities. Typically, each house has a shared kitchen/amenity area and a bathroom, and each pair or rooms shares a shower. A student centre has a cafe/bar/common-room/meeting room, a small shop, telephones, a laundry and vending machines, and a computing room.
In some cases, the college buildings will incorporate the tutorial rooms of one or two non-laboratory departments (History, or Mathematics, for example). A large non-laboratory department might have a separate building within the college grounds (as Economics within Alcuin, for example). There may be seminar rooms and lecture rooms, large and small, within a college and its associated buildings. But that does not affect the membership of the College itself: each college has members undertaking courses in all departments; and, whatever subject you are studying, when you attend a lecture, that lecture could be located anywhere within the University.
Accommodation
All colleges provide accommodation.
Catering and bars
Every college has a snack bar. In addition, Derwent and Goodricke have dining rooms, while Alcuin, Halifax, James and Vanbrugh have brasseries. Every college has a bar.
Common rooms
All colleges have common rooms: generally, a Junior Common Room (JCR), Graduate Common Room (GCR) and Senior Common Room (SCR).
James College has a JCR only: its graduate and senior members use the GCR and SCR of Wentworth Graduate College.
Undergraduate libraries
Each college used to have its own undergraduate library; but now there is just a single Inter-Collegiate Undergraduate Library, situated in Langwith College.
Economies of this kind, which involve the relocation rather than the removal of facilities, are made in order to keep costs down: for your benefit.
Cleaning and heating
All colleges provide basic services (room cleaning, heating, etc.), and have facilities for students to wash and dry their own clothes and bedlinen.
Self-catering
All colleges provide self-catering, to varying extents (see next).
What else?
The colleges at York provide more than do 'halls of residence', but certainly less than do colleges in the more traditional sense: they are not charitable bodies owning their own land and buildings, they are not involved in the admission of students to the University, and they do not undertake academic supervision - although they are indeed involved in the pastoral care of students.
The facilities that they provide have changed over time, not only in line with changes to the economy and to the level of support that universities and students receive, but also in response to the changing expectations and requirements that students place upon them.
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As one example, there is now much more demand for self-catering, and very little for central dining rooms. (Dining rooms are necessary mainly for the conference trade - which helps to pay for the facilities that are provided for students, and so keeps prices down.) Consequently, recent student accommodation has been designed with a kitchen/dining-room for each cluster of student rooms, and there is a supermarket centrally placed in the main site of the University.
If you prefer not to shop and cook your own food, you can eat anywhere - the original scheme of each college having a dining room serving the same kind of food as every other has been replaced by a variety of cafes, brasseries, snack bars and so on, each serving a very different kind of food in a different atmosphere. This might be seen as going against the traditional collegiate ideal, but there is no doubt that it is what the students want - and you, the customers, must determine what the colleges provide.
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As another example, there is a variety of family accommodation, of many sizes. At Halifax College, for instance, McHugh Court is composed entirely of family houses.
The original ideal of staff-student social contact still exists in a few of the colleges; but declining staff involvement, pressures on college space, and pressures on staff time have all meant that, realistically, the colleges at York are now becoming nearer to halls of residence. They do, though, have very good in-house social facilities and an essential and valued role in student support. Certainly, they retain a strong sense of identity and social cohesion: an indication of that is that students are described by their college, rather than by their department, when they are identified in student-produced journalism. That identity arises largely because you retain membership of your College even though you may live in different kinds of accommodation, in different places, from year to year.
See also
- the University of York page about colleges, and
- the UoY Admissions and Schools Liaison page about colleges.
- the UoY Accommodation Office page about colleges.
It can be difficult for applicants to find out about the college system at York from printed and on-line media, where coverage of college matters has been declining and is not always up to date. If you would like more information, do please let us know what we should be saying, and where and how we should be saying it.
An international view of colleges
Did you know that many universities around the world - in at least sixteen countries - are collegiate?
See here for
How to contact us | Page author Bill Freeman | Page last updated 04 Mar 2010