The First World War had a significant impact on the Victoria University of Manchester and the Municipal School of Technology.
At the outbreak of war, the Victoria University of Manchester had a student enrolment of 1,415 students and 167 full time teaching staff. By the end of the war around a third had been killed. The War also had a devastating impact on the Municipal School of Technology which lost around 200 students and members of staff.
Those students that survived the war returned as war hardened veterans who had to be integrated back into the structure of University life.
The war had seen the proportion of female students rise, but this did not continue after the war. By 1938 the proportion of male to female students had almost returned to its pre-war level.
The necessities of war drove intellectual and technological advances, to which both institutions had actively contributed. For the Municipal School of Technology, the contribution to the war effort was recognised as it was renamed the Municipal College of Technology.