Kingston University London is a public research university located within the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, in South West London, England. Its roots go back to the Kingston Technical Institute, founded in 1899. It received university status in 1992, before which the institution was known as Kingston Polytechnic.
Kingston has around 17,000 students and a turnover of £192 million. It has four campuses situated in Kingston and Roehampton. The university specialises in the arts, design, fashion, science, engineering, and business and is organised into four faculties: Kingston School of Art, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences (which combines Kingston Business School and the School of Law, Social and Behavioural Sciences), Faculty of Health, Science, Social Care and Education and Faculty of Engineering, Computing and the Environment. The Kingston Business School is CNAA MBA degree approved. In 2017, the university won The Guardian University Award for teaching excellence. Kingston is a member of the European University Association, the Association of Commonwealth Universities and University Alliance group.
The University has been ranked in the UK's top 50 institutions by The Guardian in the last three years of the newspaper's annual rankings. In the most recent release, Kingston was rated top in London for fashion and textiles, and nursing and midwifery, while featuring in the top 10 nationally in five subjects. The University's Town House building, which was opened in January 2020, has picked up two prestigious awards – The 2021 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize, given to the best new building in the UK, and the Mies van der Rohe architecture award for the best building in the EU in 2022. In June 2021, Kingston launched its Future Skills campaign, highlighting the importance of skills for innovation and the vital role they play in driving a thriving UK economy. The results of their 2021 and 2022 surveys, conducted with support from YouGov and sampling more than 2,000 businesses and 1,000 students, demonstrated key attributes such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, adaptability and creativity remain among the core skills most valued by employers.