It has formal charity status as a not-for-profit institution dedicated to the ends of research and education.

Here, on or just off Hunter Street, are some of the university's central buildings: Yeomanry House; the Anthony de Rothschild building (which contains Humanities); the Humanities Library; and also some of the student accommodation, looking northwards across the river.

[citation needed] On 24 February 2020, Dame Mary Archer was installed as chancellor of the university.

The university was created as a liberal arts college, and still describes itself as such, although in an interview with The Guardian in 2003, then-vice-chancellor Terence Kealey remarked that it had "become a vocational school for law and business for non-British students, because that's where the market has taken us".

Some degree programmes at Buckingham, Law for example, place greater emphasis on exams as an assessment method rather than coursework, but in general its degree programmes balance assessment between exams and coursework.

[28] Other medical courses are offered in the School of Postgraduate Medicine and Allied Health.

[37] There are a number of lecturers including many BLEU (Buckingham Lean Enterprise Unit)[39] certified ones, which are individuals who have completed a MSc with the university since 1999.

[26] In some subject areas, notably Humanities, the university is now offering its degrees over different time-scales, i.e., the 2-year 'intensive' model, working the extra summer term per year, and the traditional 3-year model with the usual summer break each year.

The university awards undergraduate and graduate (Masters/MBA) degrees to students who have studied at the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology.

In late 2014 Medipathways was found by the Higher Education Quality Assurance Agency 'to be at serious risks of failure'; the university disagreed with the assessment.

[45][46] Alan Smithers runs the Centre for Education and Employment Research (CEER), from within the School of Humanities.

[53] The Complete University Guide has seen a steady decline in Buckingham's ranking, from 20th in 2011 to 107th in the 2020 table.

[53] The subject league tables in the Complete University Guide 2020 ranked Buckingham 79th for Accounting and Finance, 76th for Business & Management, 82nd for Computer Science, 52nd for Economics, 73rd for English, 49th for Law, 73rd for Politics, and 92nd for Psychology.

Buckingham has been reviewed voluntarily by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) from 2001.

[60] In 2015 the QAA found that Buckingham had failed to follow the university's regulations on academic misconduct with respect to possible plagiarism by students.

[61] An "alternative providers" (i.e. private universities) review by the QAA in 2017 found again that Buckingham met UK expectations in all areas.

[62] In June 2017 the university was judged by the Teaching Excellence Framework panel to be "of the highest quality found in the UK" and given a gold award.

[63] In December 2022, England’s higher education regulator OfS (Office for Students) fined the university for publishing its 2019 audited accounts two years late, citing a "“significant regulatory risk”.

British alumni include Bader Ben Hirsi, playwright and director;[72] The Rt Hon Brandon Lewis CBE, former MP for Great Yarmouth and former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland;[73] Mark Lancaster, Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton, former Armed Forces minister;[74] Graham Roos, appointed in 2011 as the university's first Creative Artist in Residence;[citation needed] James Henderson (former CEO of Bell Pottinger);[citation needed] Michael Ellis, former MP for Northampton, former Minister for the Cabinet Office and former Paymaster General.