The race to be Sunday Times University of the Year has been won this year by Loughborough University. After three shortlistings for the award in the past decade, Loughborough finally stands on top of the podium after an outstanding year which has seen it equal its highest-ever league table position just outside our top 10.

It beat Imperial College London to our top award. Imperial, which moves up a place this year to third in our league table, is one of the leading centres worldwide for the study of science and engineering. Aston, Sheffield and Southampton complete our shortlist for University of the Year.

The sporting analogy is wholly appropriate for Loughborough, which has bestrode the sporting stage nationally and internationally for the best part of three decades. It had 48 athletes — students past and present — at the Beijing Olympic Games, who between them reached 19 finals, broke 15 national records, two European records and brought home a silver and bronze medal. Many other athletes — double gold swimmer Rebecca Adlington among them — use the outstanding facilities the university offers without actually studying there.

But the importance of sport to the university is cultural rather than being just performance led. “The sporting ethos pervades everything Loughborough does,” concedes Professor Shirley Pearce, the vice-chancellor. “The qualities needed — determination, grit, training, endurance, not being destroyed by failure nor overwhelmed by success — are all relevant to life generally, not just sport.”

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But she is keen to dispel the myth that Loughborough is just for sporty types who like nothing better than an evening in the bar discussing PBs ). “We are interested in getting the best students. Not all of us are good at sport and you don’t have to be to go to Loughborough. What you do need is the potential to aspire, to achieve the things you want to achieve.”

And Loughborough has achieved a lot in the 42 years since it became a university. This year, it has finished joint second with Cambridge in the national student survey with a 84.3% overall satisfaction rating, according to a unique Sunday Times analysis of the results. Only the private University of Buckingham scored higher.

The results of teaching quality assessments conducted since 1996 put Loughborough second only to Cambridge among multi-faculty institutions. The 18 top-rated subjects spanning the arts (art and design; drama, dance and cinematics), sciences (physics and astronomy, anatomy and physiology), social sciences (economics, politics, sociology) and engineering (chemical, civil, electrical and electronic, mechanical, aeronautical and manufacturing) do more than anything to dispel the notion that this is a centre for sporting excellence only. Its pedigree in science and engineering is hard to overstate and graduates from all disciplines are in demand. They earn £2,000 more in their first jobs than the UK graduate average and 79.1% of them get graduate-level jobs, too, ranking the university 20th on this measure and again earning it a mention in the same breath as Oxbridge. On this occasion, Loughborough narrowly edges Oxford out of the top 20.

Pearce attributes this success to the dynamic relationship that exists between the university and many of the UK’s leading employers. “I wouldn’t want people to think that learning here is all practical hands-on stuff,” she says, “but our academic programmes are devised in the light of discussions with industrial partners about what they want in a graduate.”

Employers often get sight of their future staff during the work placements undertaken by 65% of Loughborough students as part of their courses. Unfashionable a few years ago, the wheel has turned and four-year degrees with placements are back in vogue, despite the extra costs involved (which are often offset by students’ earnings anyway). “We never stopped doing them,” says Pearce. “These students bring back knowledge about what is happening in the employers’ world. “As a university, you have to be clear about what you are good at and then do more and more and more of it.”

This is nowhere better exemplified than with the establishment of the Energies Technology Institute at Loughborough, which builds on an existing track record in sustainability. A collaboration with Birmingham and Nottingham universities, its remit is to speed up the deployment of new low-carbon energy technologies. Professor Dennis Loveday, head of Loughborough’s sustainability research school, says: “The aim is to increase our impact in this area, to create the knowledge and technology to help UK plc reduce its carbon footprint.”

The university is already working hard to achieve this. This includes its environmentally-friendly engine project, a £30m collaboration between the university, government and Rolls-Royce to develop a “green” aircraft engine. Elsewhere, a Loughborough spin-out company, Intelligent Energy, which has developed fuel-cell technology for mobile and static use, has seen its technology deployed by Boeing. Pearce calls it “walking the walk as well as talking the talk” as she outlines the university’s own green strategies, an increasingly important aspect when it comes to student recruitment.

As well as purchasing all its electricity from renewable resources since 2001, Loughborough has a combined heat and power plant on campus, which makes use of the heat created when electricity is generated which would go to waste in a conventional power station.

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