SOUTHAMPTON now has two universities.

After four years of waiting, Southampton Institute was yesterday given university college status.

While there are no immediate plans for a name-change, the institute wants to eventually incorporate university college in its official title.

However, from Monday, in all promotional literature and official correspondence, the institute will now refer

to itself as Southampton Institute, a university college.

The Privy Council's announcement means the institute has the power to award its own Bachelors and Masters degrees.

For the last 12 years the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees taught at the institute have been awarded under the authority of Nottingham Trent University.

Southampton Institute Principal, Professor Roger Brown, said: "Being awarded taught degree awarding powers is tremendous news for the institute.

"It gives official recognition to our maturity as an institution, to the quality of the student experience and to the standard of our awards, and it also means well-deserved recognition for our staff."

However, the new status does not mean any extra money for the institute which was formed in 1982 from the merger of Southampton Coll-ege of Art and Southampton College of Higher education.

It currently has 11,000 full- time and part-time undergraduates and postgraduates with hundreds of courses on offer including law, media, business and computing.

A name change would be the subject of a public consultation.

A spokesman said that plenty of possible names had been mooted over the last few years, but no one at the institute was prepared to reveal any of them.

Earlier this year King Alfred's College in Winch-ester was granted university status and changed its name to University College, Winchester.

Southampton University vice-chancellor, Professor Bill Wakeham, said: "We are very pleased for the institute.

"The university and the institute have complementary strengths, which means that the city of Southampton and the wider region are both well served in the area of higher education.

"We don't anticipate any confusion between the two institutions as this has not been a significant problem in the past, and we look forward to continued cordial relations with the institute."