Merger news

1 May 1998

The merger dividend

The mergers will bring the benefits of critical mass to the College's research in many areas, particularly in medicine, dentistry and biomedical, health and life sciences. This will place it among the country's leaders in terms of ability to compete for large scale research funding, while continuing to enable it to retain smaller centres of academic excellence, particularly in Humanities. The merged College will be one of the UK's top five institutions for research earnings, and will be able to build further upon King's success as a holder of the Queen's Award for Export Achievement by attaining still higher levels of foreign earnings.

The mergers will create important synergies within the College which will strengthen and enliven research and encourage partnership with outside organisations. Co-operation and cross-disciplinary work in the merging institutions has already brought about fruitful development in several areas, including : neurosciences and neurodegenerative diseases; psychological medicine; the philosophy of mental disorder; developmental biology; cardiovascular science; atopy, allergy and asthma; diabetes; anti-oxidants and ageing; anaemia, iron-absorption and iron biochemistry; transplantation science, Afro-Caribbean Medicine (with the University of the West Indies) and immune therapy for ovarian cancer.

Teaching and learning in general will benefit from the location of three of the merged College's campuses in the heart of London. The new facilities at the Guy's and Waterloo campuses will combine with many planned improvements at the Strand, for which £3.5 million has been earmarked to begin upgrading facilities, including the space to be vacated by biomeidcal sciences, and further funding is being sought from corporate and private sources. Together, these developments will enable the College to maximise the benefits of being close to the capital's arts centres, museums, libraries, historical monuments and major public institutions.

The Tomlinson Review of London Medicine recommended that all postgraduate institutes in London should join multi-faculty Colleges, and that doctors, dentists and health-care professionals should where possible be educated alongside students in other disciplines. In the merged College, medical and dental students will be able to mix with students of many other subjects, and some will be able to undertake intercalated courses in areas such as humanities and social sciences. The merged college will offer the widest range of opportunities in the country for study in medicine, dentistry and subjects allied to medicine, in association with four of the country's most famous hospitals: Guy's, King's College, St Thomas' and the Maudsley. The merging Colleges are pioneering a new medical and dental curriculum which emphasises the acquisition of communication, learning and IT skills, and enables the members of a variety of health professions to learn together.