The institution, which has around 4,500 full-time students and is the biggest undergraduate institution outside the state-funded sector, will be known as Regent’s University London after the Department for Business Innovation and Skills said it met the criteria for university title.

To qualify for university title, institutions must have at least 1,000 students on full-time higher education courses – a threshold lowered from 4,000 by the coalition government –pass checks on governance, and have their proposed name approved.

The college, based in Regent’s Park in central London, has gone through the newer Companies House route for university title, rather than the traditional Privy Council route. The college said the name change will be completed through Companies House “in the coming weeks”.

It added that university title is “part of an ambitious strategy…which will see Regent’s becoming the leading private non-profit university in Europe”. Writes John Morgan for Times Higher Education.