UK University Ranking 2016

Changes in the University Ranking

For many students and parents, the UK university ranking published by the Times Good University Guide is a major reference when choosing their university programmes. The ranking evaluates UK universities by criteria such as teaching quality, student experience, research quality, entry standards, student-staff ratio and graduate prospect.

In view of the UK Government’s future plan to enhance teaching and learning experience and the availability of new datasets, the Times made the following changes to the ranking of 2016:

• The UK Government has plans in place to enhance teaching and learning experience in higher education. Changes were therefore made to the weighting of the student satisfaction score, putting further emphasis on student’s satisfaction with teaching, feedback and academic support. After these changes, the student satisfaction score will carry the same weight in the whole ranking as before, but its formulation will reveal more of aspects that have direct impact to learning experience.
• The research quality score in the Times ranking is based on a research assessment exercise carried out by an UK government agent every six years. The latest research assessment exercise (REF 2014) was released in early 2015, bringing new insights and changes to the ranking.

Although there are more changes in the mechanism and datasets than before, these resulted in no major movements in the first half of the ranking, reflecting that many of these universities are very well-balanced in their provision of education. With the release of the 2016 university ranking, we would like point out a few important changes in the ranking:

• Cambridge tops the table after a year sharing number one with Oxford.
• University of Surrey makes it to the Top 10 and is now ranked the 8^th in the UK. Surrey is also the winner of the University of the Year award for the good balance between research and teaching quality.
• Over 25 universities within the top 30 now offer some university foundation programmes. Many of these offer “Guaranteed Progression” with very encouraging progression rates.

The Importance of Subject Ranking

When looking at the university ranking table, students should be aware that it is based on overall performance of the universities, and therefore may not necessarily reflects a university’s strength in a specific subject area. For many reasons, some universities that are leading in a specific subject area might be ranked relatively low in the overall ranking table. This phenomenon is more common in newly developed subjects (such as hospitality & tourism). For students who have chosen a specific subject, subject ranking tables will be a better reference.