The University of Southampton is a public university located in Southampton, England. Southampton is a research intensive university and a founding member of the Russell Group of elite British universities. The origins of the university date back to the founding of the Hartley Institution in 1862 following a legacy to the Corporation of Southampton by Henry Robertson Hartley. In 1902, the Institution developed into the Hartley University College, with degrees awarded by the University of London. On 29 April 1952, the institution was granted a Royal Charter to give the University of Southampton full university status. It is a member of the European University Association, the Association of Commonwealth Universities and is an accredited institution of the Worldwide Universities Network. Besides being recognised as one of the leading research universities in the UK, Southampton has also achieved consistently high scores for its teaching and learning activities. It additionally has one of the highest proportions of income derived from research activities in Britain, and is regularly ranked in the top 100 universities in the world. As of 2014 Southampton is one of the few universities to achieve a top 20 UK position in the most established national and international rankings (along Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, UCL, LSE and Warwick). The University of Southampton currently has over 16,000 undergraduate and 7,000 postgraduate students, making it the largest university by higher education students in the South East region. The university has seven teaching campuses. The main campus is located in the Highfield area of Southampton and is supplemented by four other campuses within the city: Avenue Campus housing the Faculty of Humanities, the National Oceanography Centre housing courses in Ocean and Earth Sciences, Southampton General Hospital offering courses in Medicine and Health Sciences, and Boldrewood Campus an engineering and maritime technology campus housing also the university's strategic ally Lloyd's Register. In addition, the university operates a School of Art based in nearby Winchester and an international branch in Malaysia offering courses in Engineering. Each campus is equipped with its own library facilities.
