King’s College London to merge with Cranfield University | King’s College London
King’s College London has signed an agreement to merge with Cranfield University, creating a new UK “super university” that will rival many of its international rivals in size and research output.
The merger will result in KCL taking on a further 5,000 mainly postgraduate students, surpassing the University of Manchester with around 47,000 students and becoming the second largest mainstream university in the UK behind University College London.
According to the agreement, the two institutions will merge by the end of summer 2027, and its name has yet to be officially decided.
The government has already given preliminary approval for the merger to go ahead at a time when the higher education sector in England is struggling financially.
A merger between the University of Greenwich and the University of Kent was announced last year; Britain’s higher education regulator, the Office for Students, warned on Thursday that universities “remain under continued pressure from variable student recruitment patterns and rising costs”.
Prof Shitij Kapur, vice-chancellor of KCL, said: “The merger will bring new educational opportunities for students, new discoveries from academics and a clear focus on working in partnership with industry and government to support national resilience.
“This is a deliberate move to bring some of the UK’s best into competition with the world’s best.”
Patrick Vallance, the government’s science and innovation minister, said the merger would “create an exceptionally strong university… bringing together two world-class institutions, giving King’s a place at the heart of one of our most important regions for science and technology.”
“It will drive innovation and growth, draw on the complementary strengths and expertise of both institutions and increase access, capacity and resilience across teaching and research.”
Cranfield, which is located near the town of the same name in Bedfordshire and has another campus in Oxfordshire, was founded as an aviation college after the second world war. More than 90% of its students are graduate students focusing on technology, engineering and management studies.
Cranfield vice-chancellor Prof Karen Holford said: “This merger is an exciting proposition for Cranfield, combining our deep expertise in engineering, technology and management within KCL.
“It is a deliberate step that brings Cranfield University’s outstanding applied research, nationally significant facilities, dominant capacity and long-standing industry links to King’s, creating enormous potential.”
