Top 20 places where students love to study

The next edition of The Times Good University Guide is only a few weeks away, but some questions just won’t wait when you are looking for a place in higher education. That applies particularly this year, when the Government has restricted the number of students that universities can take and the competition for places is likely to be more intense than ever.

The 2009 Guide was written with entry this autumn in mind and the tables on this site still offer valid comparisons at institutional and subject level. Universities do not change overnight and most of them will be in similar (although probably not identical) positions in the next edition.

In other higher education league tables, there is often substantial movement not because universities have improved or deteriorated, but because the criteria by which they are judged alter from year to year. The Times version has made a virtue of consistency.

This year, however, for the first time since the 2003 Guide, there will be new figures for every measure in our table, so there may be more movement than usual. Exactly how much will become clear at the beginning of June, when the next edition appears, but statistics already published in The Times and elsewhere provide a pointer to some of the likely rises and falls.

The biggest influence will be the National Student Survey (NSS), the results of which carry the highest weighting in our table. The other important contributor will be the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which was reported in detail in The Times a week before Christmas.

The NSS measures satisfaction levels among final-year undergraduates at universities throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland and at a majority of those in Scotland. Scores rose in the latest survey, as universities responded to complaints about assessment and feedback in particular, but those with above-average increases should see the benefit in the coming tables.

St Andrews’ recent rise to become the top university in Scotland, for example, came largely from outstanding results in the NSS. Having satisfied 93 per cent of its students – only a marginal decline on the previous year – that position should be safe, together with its place in the UK top five.

Further down the table, overall satisfaction rose from a disappointing 78 per cent to an above-average 83 per cent last year at Northumbria. With three universities within ten points of it in the current table, Northumbria might hope to move up from 84th place, assuming its performance on other measures is comparable.

Research scores, which have been unchanged since the last assessments were published in 2001, may have even more effect on the top of the table. With Cambridge producing more top grades than Oxford, as well as slightly higher satisfaction rates, there may even be uncertainty over the top place that Oxford has occupied for the last six years.

Unlike the research tables produced in December, The Times Good University Guide will take account of the proportion of academics at each university whose work was examined in the RAE. But the results published then suggest that universities such as East Anglia and Queen Mary, University of London, may move up the overall ranking if they maintain their positions on other measures.

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