City St George's frequently asked questions for students

Students were contacted at the start of last year to communicate our discussions with City and were able to feed into a consultation on the name of our combined institution last June. The final decision on whether to merge was made by our Council.

The Students’ Union has been working hard to communicate with students via emails and events over the last few months. Students have been invited to complete Q&As and attend Townhalls as we are keen to hear your voices.

There was a Townhall in January last year as a chance for students to ask questions and add comments on our discussions so far with City.

We are also keen to ensure that students are involved and engaged in discussions regarding our combined institution over the next few months

Please look out for emails with further details.

Exploration of the idea of City and St George’s becoming a combined institution was started in 2022 by City’s President, St George’s Vice-Chancellor and both university’s Councils, as an opportunity to increase the scale, impact and resilience of the two institutions.

With St George’s courses in allied health, medicine, and human sciences and City’s offering in nursing, midwifery, speech and language therapy, psychology, and optometry, we have created a health powerhouse for students and researchers. We believe the combination of our reputation as a world-leading specialist health university and City's excellence in a range of disciplines including health, business, law, creativity, and communications, will propel us to new heights and offer students exciting opportunities. 

Our institutions had a strong alignment within our strategies and goals. We both had a deeply embedded commitment to education, research and professionalism through practice. Our institutions developed graduates who have the skills, experience and connections to go out and get great jobs. 

To add to St George's strengths in medicine, pharmacology, biomedical science and allied health, City brought outstanding nursing, midwifery, optometry, speech and language therapy, counselling and psychology, and more.   

City St George's creates opportunities to create significant change in the world of healthcare by intersecting St George's combined health expertise with City’s multi-faculty contributions. 

City St George's allow us to broaden the opportunities and outcomes available for all of our students through the possibility of direct engagement of different disciplines together.  

In time, you will be able to access shared facilities, resources, and learning opportunities across all campuses. This will provide a broader range of academic programmes, extracurricular activities, labs, libraries, recreation centres, and other amenities to enrich the overall student experience. We hope to share more information about this in the coming weeks and months.

City St George's has three campuses, Clerkenwell, Moorgate and Tooting, all easily accessible via the Northern line. For some of you, there may be a closer campus to home than our Tooting site. We will not be asking students to relocate their studies, but the facilities available in the Clerkenwell and Moorgate campuses may be of interest to you in the future.

Overtime, it will be possible to develop additional degree programmes and training and development opportunities, including in lifelong learning, building on overlapping areas.

St George’s, University of London and City, University of London merged on 1 August 2024. We are now ‘City St George’s, University of London’.

To incorporate both institutions, our visual identity will change, however, we will seek to retain a sense of our current established identity and rich heritage as we move forward as City St George’s, University of London.

In time, students within City's School of Health & Psychological Sciences will join students from St George’s, to form a new integrated School of Health & Medical Sciences. The new School will be launched in 2025.

Before this, current and new students starting in September will be part of the St George's School of Health and Medical Sciences which covers all programmes that were previously offered by St George's, and is based on the Tooting campus. 

Tooting students who registered up to, and including, September 2024 (and who will graduate in 2024-25, 2025-26 and 2026-27), will be able to choose whether to receive a certificate bearing the St George’s Hospital Medical School logo, or the City St George’s, University of London logo.
If you are due to graduate during any of the above years, we will contact you at the point of graduating to ask which certificate you would like to receive.

Please note that we will review certificates again in 2027-28, following this initial three-year period. We will be sure to communicate with students to confirm the outcome of these discussions.
This option is available to Tooting Students only and not to students on our other City St George’s campuses.

 

No, there is no change of location planned to your current programme of study. The St George’s campus has become City St George's Tooting campus. City St George's recognises and values the importance of the unique co-location within the wider St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust campus.

While some administrative systems and processes will be streamlined, we do not anticipate major changes to core academic processes or ways of working in the short term. Your course of study should proceed as expected, with your current degree requirements, module offerings, and teaching and learning continuing as before.

Any future academic changes would go through the normal curriculum review and approval processes with the best interest of students in mind, and input from teaching staff, students, year reps, Students’ Union representatives and academic leadership.

Our focus is on maintaining academic continuity and quality for all students and focusing on the enhanced student experience that City St George's offers. 

If you are a new or continuing student, you will be joining City St George’s (not St George’s) when you enrol or re-enrol for the 2024/25 academic year.

This means that as you enrol/re-enrol you are agreeing that your student contract will be with City St George’s from that point onwards. The terms and conditions that you sign up to, as part of your re-enrolment, will be with City St George's to reflect the change.

However, there will be no difference to the delivery of your course. You can still expect the same excellent teaching, taught by the same subject experts, and will be based at our Tooting campus shared with St George’s Hospital. For information on how this affects your degree certificate, please refer to the above question, ‘Will the new name be on my degree certificate?’.

You do not need to do anything. The terms and conditions that you sign up to, as part of your enrolment / re-enrolment, will be with City St George’s, University of London.

We will keep you updated with news about the merger. In the meantime, you can find out more by:

• submitting an anonymous question for the forum
• emailing your enquiry to merger.info@sgul.ac.uk. 

City had seen recent stronger league table performance and the two universities were comparable. In the 2024 Sunday Times table, City was ranked 66th in the UK and 11th in London; and St George's 79th and 12th.

In the Complete University Guide 2024, City improved to 42nd place nationally; St George's is 78th. Queen Mary, our Russell Group peer, is 53rd. City had also seen strong recent improvements in its student satisfaction scores, and its graduate outcome performance was impressive. Both of these improvements are likely to have a further positive impact on league table performance in the forthcoming tables. 

In terms of research, in the relevant Research Excellence Framework Rankings (REF), City was 18th for Allied Health Professions. St George’s was =20th for Clinical Medicine and 27th for Public Health). Overall City was 39th and St George’s 42nd.

While league tables may be seen as a useful indicator of quality and reputation, City had a unique and distinctive positioning as the UK's leading university of business, practice and the professions.

We are very keen to provide opportunities for both students and staff to get together others across City St George's. Please look out for details of upcoming events that provide these opportunities in our student newsletter and other student communications.

While becoming City St George's means St George's is no longer be the UK’s only health focused university, we have a vision to be the UK’s most comprehensive health educator.

City highly valued the St George’s (now Tooting) campus, the St George's heritage and our relationship with the Trust.

We have always wanted the University to be ambitious while retaining our unique identity, and will be working together to maintain our relationship with the Trust.

City St George's opens up exciting new opportunities for our staff and students.

City was complementary to St George's values and our student body shares many characteristics. For example, we were both commuter universities and, like us, City was particularly strong in graduate prospects.

City’s strength and reputation in Business also brings opportunities at a time when St George's students want to be increasingly entrepreneurial.

We have worked hard to ensure that we have an equal voice across a range of key areas, and to leverage the best of both institutions for City St George's students.

From a practical and legal perspective, City could not merge into us, as our University started out of an NHS act in 1946 which is defunct and no longer exists. Because of this, dissolving both universities and creating a new one was not financially viable or practical.

Yes, there will be changes to our logo and signage. You will start to see our new logo in use internally as we move through the rebranding process. The external launch of the new institution will take place in March 2025 and will be supported by a range of activities and events to mark this very significant step forward in our development. We will let you know about the launch plans nearer the time.

 

Both staff and students at City and St George’s are aligned on our values and have a commitment to ethical investments (Read the St George’s investment policy here, which also outlines the University approach to socially responsible investment).

Changes to City's investment policy are considered and approved by its Council, which includes staff and student representatives.

They do not support or adopt a political position in relation to a range of world conflicts and their policies reflect this position, which are also subject to prevailing UK legislation.

City will also not invest in companies which are in breach of international norms and whose activities can be seen to endanger individuals or groups of people.

They do not invest in governments which have breached UK, UN, US or EU sanctions, or face any other ESG related events that may affect their prosperity and economic development.

Through positive and negative investment screening, City expects its appointed Investment Managers to seek companies demonstrating a responsible approach to environmental social and governance issues and avoid investing in companies which do not.

When selecting investments, management considers a range of factors including:

Protection of the global environment, its climate and biodiversity; promotion of human rights; Equality of gender, race, religion and sexual orientation.

Read their sustainable investment statement here.

Our SUs have merged but we will not lose our SU presence on site. This academic year, we have two Deputy Presidents (for Welfare and Education) and will also be working to make further decisions on the SU's structure over the next few months. We are prioritising working to ensure representation of our student voice. The SU office on our Tooting campus continues to provide welfare support for students and support for the clubs and societies.

The SU Deputy Presidents are in most days, so please drop by the SU office or get in touch with them via the email addresses below.

They attend regular meetings with SU colleagues based at the Clerkenwell campus, and there will be opportunities throughout the year to allow students to engage with staff about the merger and share their voice.

• Contact the President of Education
• Contact the President of Welfare

If (previously) St George’s societies want to remain independent, they are welcome to do so, but societies can also decide to merge if they would like to.

Teams can also still play under their existing names and kits.

The two SUs are having regular meetings to determine whose financial plan will work better for City St George's, or whether a combination of the two systems would be feasible.

Decision are based on students’ interests, and we will update students as soon as we know more.

No, please continue to use you @sgul.ac.uk email address to email and to login to services. Email addresses are likely to change in the future, but we will give you notice before this happens. 

Teaching and placements will continue as they do currently. We will be exploring how to approach this in the future, but there is no immediate change.

You do not need to change your bank details. Student Services staff will handle any changes needed to allow students to pay their fees as normal.

We will be looking into what opportunities are currently available to students across City St George's campuses. Where we have existing opportunities that are available to students we will work to keep these and expand these where possible.

Undergraduate fees for Home/UK students are set/capped by the government. Fees for international students and postgraduate students however are subject to change, these have been set already for 2024/25.

Changes will be in line with our Tuition Fee Policy. Over the years, we will give thought to alignment with (previously) City's fees, but any decisions affecting students will be clearly communicated.

Our alumni will be part of the alumni group for both institutions, and we will be working to see how we can expand our offering for alumni across City St George’s.

Investing in students and their facilities is a priority for City St George's, and maintaining and improving the Tooting campus facilities will be part of a long-term financial plan.

There will be no change to our existing offer to current students. However, in the long-term there will be a possibility of additional placements for City St George's students. Any decisions on future opportunities will be made in a way that channels student needs.