College Profile - Queen's: Its inclusive policies towards students and a reputation for academic excellence, means Queen's is attracting students from near and far. Anne Byrne reports.

Next door to the Botanic Gardens and the Ulster Museum in south Belfast, QUB enjoys a great location, albeit only a stone's throw from some of the city's most deprived trouble spots.

The main campus contains the best of buildings and the worst of buildings.

The beautiful redbrick Lanyon building, dating from 1845, and pictured on most college literature, faces directly across the road to a 1960s calamity that houses the Students Union.

However, plans are afoot to enhance the student experience and in so doing, the campus will gain significantly in architectural terms. The SU building will be demolished, to be replaced by Lanyon II. Tower block accommodation for students, at Queen's Elms, is also scheduled for the wrecker's ball, to be replaced by Elms Village. The Stg£150 million plan also includes a new library (the current building is too small), a scholarship scheme, and new sporting initiatives. The money is to be raised entirely from private sources.

Meanwhile, the college's vice-chancellor Professor Sir George Bain (called George by everyone) is still celebrating the college's recent success in the Research Assessment Exercise. Carried out on a five-yearly basis, QUB's performance was significantly improved. It retained its 5* rating (the highest accolade) for mechanical, aeronautical and manufacturing engineering and obtained fifteen five ratings (compared to six in 1996), and 17 four ratings (compared to 12 in 1996). Five equates to international excellence, while four equates to national excellence with some evidence of international excellence.

Of course, there are statistics and statistics. The college moved up the rankings in newspaper league tables, and is now ranked at number 40 in a Guardian table and number 38 in a Times table, of the 170 institutions assessed by RAE. However, QUB prefers to quote the "power research" tables, which favour larger institutions and put them into the top 20. It also likes to point out that it is first for teaching and in the top three for research in the 15 most popular destinations for Northern Ireland students.

The RAE can be a cherry-picking exercise as colleges choose which departments and staff they will have assessed. QUB submitted more than 80 per cent of its staff so its improved results are even more significant.

Bain sees the RAE results as a vindication of the £25 million academic restructuring he undertook when he was appointed. There was a very public washing of linen, following his invitation to more than 100 staff to leave.

At the time of his appointment, QUB had an excellent teaching reputation, but it was slipping in the research and development area..

Bain maintains that if QUB had not restructured it would have dropped significantly in the RAE tables. The college continues to perform well in teaching, as assessed by the QAA procedure "My vision for QUB, after 30 years of troubles, was that it was a fine university, but wasn't achieving its full potential. I wanted to provide the widest possible access to international standards and research. The big thing we have pushed for here is balanced excellence," he says.

Northern Ireland is not experiencing the declining population of school-leavers that is worrying colleges in the Republic. Some 40 per cent of students in Northern Ireland go to third-level, with 40 per cent of those choosing colleges in Britain. Bain says: "I see lot of reasons why students might wish to leave home to study in the UK, Europe or elsewhere. But I thought it would be a shame if people felt they had to go across the water or go south to get a first-class university education, by international standards. I think we have now demonstrated that we offer that here."

Leaving the surprisingly likeable, heavily Canadian-accented vice-chancellor in his room in the Lanyon, and descending to the Great Hall underneath (now a coffee shop open to the public), it seems ironic to reflect that women were admitted to QUB from 1881, a quarter of a century before the state gave them the vote. The 1908 Charter, which made the college a fully fledged university, was also ahead of its time, providing for a student on the governing body and making women equally eligible with men to hold any office or enjoy any advantages of the university. However, in the Great Hall, a wall of college portraits fails to reflect any female presence throughout the years. And, today, a women's forum gender initiative is working to improve the position and profile of women on the workforce.

The college can accommodate more than 2,000 people (mainly first-years) in catered halls as well as self-catering rooms. In the wider area, however, Queen's students have been at the centre of what the university calls "social tensions" with other residents.

In the Students' Union, a very competent-seeming young woman, Emma Little, is deputy president of the SU. A law graduate, she has deferred her training as a barrister for a year to engage in student activities. The emphasis at the SU has moved from the political to service provision, she says.

In recent decades, the SU has been strongly associated with nationalism. This year, it has the most balanced executive yet. And Little says: "We're trying to make sure everyone feels comfortable in the union. We are looking at a constitutional review as well as minority protection." For instance, the SU runs a subsidised crèche service,which she describes as "the jewel in its crown".

"Sports facilities are satisfactory and cheap, at about 60 to 70p for everything in the PE club. Internet accommodation is very good, with a large number of access centres. Fees and grants are the main issues. There are students leaving QUB with debts of up to Stg£15,000.

"We'd like to see a widening of access for socially disadvantaged students," Little says.

"Both the SU and the college are working together on this. We are involved in programmes in high schools in areas where students don't usually go to university." In addition to its work with disadvantaged areas, the SU sends letters to all schools with sixth-form colleges. Little says QUB loses a lot of students to Scotland. "I'd like to say to people, stay in Northern Ireland and contribute."