The University of Kent (formerly referred to as the University of Kent at Canterbury) is a well-known semi-collegiate public research university which is based in Kent in the United Kingdom. It was established in the year 1965 and is recognized as a Beloff's plate glass university. In 1960, sponsors of University of Kent sent University Grants Committee a proposal for creating a University in Canterbury. On the acceptance of the proposal, an Interim Committee was set up in 1962 and the university was named. It was in the year 1965 that the university was granted its Royal Charter. The institution started operating this year with just 500 students and 150 staff members. Princess Marina, the Duchess of Kent, was appointed as the university's first chancellor. Currently, the university has six colleges and its academic structure comprises of 3 academic centres and 18 academic schools. The university has won two Queen's Anniversary Prizes in eleven years for Higher and Further Education.

The university has three campuses in Kent. Located in Parkland, the Canterbury Campus is the main campus that includes six colleges, the Gulbenkian arts centre, the Templeman Library and the Mandela Building. The campus is spread across 300 acres and is well-linked to the city centre as well as London. It offers excellent academic, residential and dining facilities. The Tonbridge campus was established in 1982 as the School of continuing education. Currently, it collaborates with the Kent Innovation and Enterprise and Kent Business School. The Medway Campus is situated near the towns of Chatham and Rochester on the site of a former naval base. The campus is divided into two sites, the Dockyard Chatham and Pembroke. Pembroke houses Drill Hall Library, centres for professional practice and journalism, the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, the Student Hub social space and the Medway branches of the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research and the School of Computing. The Dockyard is home to Centre for Music and Audio Technology and the Medway branch of Kent Business School. The university also has centres in other parts of Europe including Athens, Paris, Brussels and Rome.

The university provides numerous postgraduate and undergraduate a degree programmes in various fields such as architecture, environment, arts, media, English, philosophy, social sciences, history, music, science, pharmacy, finance, sports, medicine, law, journalism, psychology, anthropology and economics. The university has over 20,100 students and more than 2,000 faculty members. 16% of the student population consists of international students. The university has a faculty-student ratio of 1:12. More than 6,700 students and 132 companies were engaged with the nationally-recognized Employability Points scheme of the university in 2015-16. Kent has collaborations with 388 institutions across the world.

The university has 160,000 alumni over 180 countries including many notable personalities. Gavin William James Esler is a popular journalist, author and television presenter. Kazuo Ishiguro is a novelist, short-story writer and screenwriter. Tom Wilkinson is an actor best known for his roles in 'Michael Clayton' and 'In the Bedroom'. Alan Davies is an actor, stand-up comedian and writer famous for his role in Jonathan Creek, the mystery drama series by BBC. David Mitchell is a novelist whose works Cloud Atlas and number9dream were nominated for the Booker Prize. Paul Telfer is an actor renowned for his role of Xander Kiriakis in the Days of Our Lives. Many other successful people are associated with the university