Postponement of graduation ceremonies

As a result of ongoing uncertainty about the duration of the coronavirus public health emergency and because of government limits on gatherings, the University has recently taken the decision to postpone graduation ceremonies set to take place in July 2021. This follows previous decisions to postpone ceremonies that had been due to be held in July 2020 and January 2021, which were also made as a result of the pandemic. While these have all been difficult decisions to make, the safety and wellbeing of our University community must remain our priority at this time

We are continuing to explore whether we can come together to celebrate students' graduations safely in person in 2021. Unfortunately, the course of the pandemic remains difficult to predict and it is not clear when government guidance will allow us to hold events of this size again, or if we will continue to be living with social distancing measures later in the year.

We remain committed to offering students the opportunity to attend a graduation ceremony once we are able to and will be regularly reviewing options for this. We will keep in touch with our graduating students when dates can be confirmed.

We look forward to coming together as a community at a later date to mark our students' achievements and the important contributions their families, friends and our staff have made to their academic success.

Please contact graduations@kingston.ac.uk if you have any further questions.

FAQs

Frequently asked questions for students who expected to attend a postponed ceremony.

When will I become a Kingston University graduate?
All students who successfully complete their course immediately become graduates of the University, even though our ceremonies have had to be postponed.

The University will keep in touch as more information becomes available. To help us do this, we are urging all our graduating students to ensure we have their up-to-date contact contact details on OSIS.
When will I receive my certificate?
Students who have successfully completed their degrees and would have been due to attend graduation ceremonies in July 2020 or January 2021 can access Digital Award Certificates on Gradintel*. They can also access the Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) via Gradintel too. These are official documents that can be shared with employers, other universities and anyone else who may need to see them, in the same way as physical copies.

Physical printed certificates can be requested online here. Please remember to provide your current address for posting and allow four weeks for receipt of your certificate.

We are urging all our students who are about to complete their studies to ensure we have their up-to-date contact details on OSIS so we can keep in touch when we have more information.

Read this page for updates, more information and how to contact the certificates team directly depending on your query.

(*If you have only just received your award this can take up to four weeks to be available.)
When will graduation ceremonies take place?
Unfortunately, we are not able to confirm ceremony dates at the moment as we do not yet know how the ongoing public health emergency will evolve or when government restrictions will be lifted.

We will be in touch with all students who have just completed their degrees and diplomas as soon as we can provide an update about our revised ceremony dates.

Results from our Class of 2020 survey

The graduations team put together a short survey to find out what the Class of 2020 (which includes everyone who would have had their ceremony in either July 2020 or January 2021) were interested in as ways of marking their achievements in the meantime.

The results show that 82% of the Class of 2020 still want to attend a ceremony when we can hold them. There was lots of interest in on-campus studio photography sessions (69%) and graduation merchandise (58%) so we are working on those areas as a priority. Very few of our graduates were interested in a virtual celebration (only 19%) so we are not planning to organise online events at this time.

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FAQs

We suggest you check our FAQs to find out everything you need to know about the graduation ceremonies.

Data protection for graduating students

The university uses student and alumni data in line with the Kingston University Data Protection Privacy Notice.

For information on how data is used for graduation ceremonies download
Data protection for graduating students.

Policies

Booking your tickets to your graduation ceremony indicates that you adhere to the University's Graduation Ceremony Policies.

Download the Graduation Ceremonies Policies (PDF).

Alumni