The University of Oxford is on something of a winning streak. After a second successive victory over Cambridge in the boat race this year, the university has now knocked its light-blue rival off the top of The Sunday Times university league table for the first time.
This feat, after 11 years in second place, earns Oxford The Sunday Times University of the Year award. It edged narrowly ahead of its principal British rival in a year of upheaval in our league table, prompted by the first research assessments in seven years and the move to measuring teaching quality primarily by levels of student satisfaction expressed through the annual national student survey (NSS).
Oxford’s 30 undergraduate colleges and five permanent private halls are some of the most desirable locations in higher education — with places sought-after by students from across the globe. Oxford attracts 16,000 applicants a year who want to learn from the world’s leading academics.
The university’s rich history and ancient customs, set against its famous backdrop of dreaming spires, must also be a draw. Whatever their discipline, students can be sure they are following in the footsteps of some illustrious predecessors — from John Donne to Oscar Wilde, from Adam Smith to Professor Stephen Hawking, from Tony Blair to David Cameron.
A string of top grades at A-level — or projections of same — is a given. Success comes from being able to demonstrate a genuine passion for the subject and rich rewards await the one in four who make it through the application process — including the infamous interviews — to receive an offer of a place.
It doesn’t take long for freshers to adopt the Oxford way of life — working and playing hard, and feeling equally comfortable in black tie, subfusc (formal academic dress) or fancy dress. The university’s unique vernacular also becomes second nature. New students attend a matriculation ceremony (formally admitting them to the university) and days and dates are forgotten, as life unfolds in named weeks (from “noughth” to eighth), and terms (Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity). Undergraduates celebrate the end of collections, mods, prelims and finals (all forms of exam) at bops (college parties). From the college scouts (who clean student rooms and serve meals), to the dons (academics) who take them for tutorials, Oxford undergraduates are granted a university experience like no other.
Oxford’s 24,000-strong student body, 11,451 of whom are full-time undergraduates, have some of the best facilities and resources in the world at their disposal. The library system is the largest in the country and includes the 400-year-old Bodleian, whose 8m books cover 117 miles of shelves.
Constant investment allows students to learn in a combination of listed buildings steeped in history, and cutting-edge modern facilities. Recent developments resulted in the launch of the University of Oxford China Centre in 2008, which provides a focus for China-related studies, and is aimed at strengthening links with that country and with other centres of study around the world.
Oxford finishes top of the pile based on the outcomes of this year’s and last year’s NSS, the views of academics and head teachers from Britain’s leading schools, the qualifications of its students on entry, their job prospects when they leave, the number of high-class degrees awarded, dropout rates, the ratio of students to staff and the outcomes of the 2008 research assessment exercise (RAE).
Dr John Hood, who completes his five-year term as vice-chancellor this month, pinpoints the development of Oxford’s research capacity as a highlight of his time in charge. “The university’s research undertakings have grown very substantially. In fact, its research revenues have nearly doubled in that period,” he says.
The influence of last December’s RAE was central to Oxford’s overhauling of Cambridge. Although Cambridge finished narrowly ahead when academics’ research ratings are averaged out (74.4% against 74%), Oxford closed the gap significantly from the previous RAE in 2001. It was also the big winner when funding was announced off the back of the new research ratings earlier this year.
Oxford was awarded 7.5% of the entire central research grants in England, winning £118.9m of the total £1.57 billion allocated. No university entered more than Oxford’s 2,246 academics for assessment (200 more than Cambridge) with music achieving the greatest proportion — 50% — of world-leading (4*) academics.
The funding that flows from such outstanding results allows Oxford to provide academics with facilities to help them push the boundaries of knowledge further. “We have seen the establishment of close to 50 new research centres and institutes, many of them interdisciplinary centres and institutes addressing the challenges that society faces today — everything from global health problems and climate change to some of the intriguing changes to human endeavour that new technologies are allowing and creating,” says Hood.
A £49m biochemistry building opened in December, which allows 300 lecturers, researchers and students to work together, and next year sees a £38m flagship earth sciences building open its doors.
Students rate the teaching they receive at the hands of world experts as highly as the funding council rates their research. Performing arts (88.3%) and medicine and dentistry (87.9%) topped Oxford’s NSS results, followed by sociology and anthropology (85.7%), European languages (84.3%) and computer science (82.1%).
However, not all final-year students have been forthcoming with their views of the university. Fewer than half responded to this year’s NSS, meaning we have relied on last year’s students to calculate Oxford’s overall satisfaction score — 83.3%. This score is narrowly ahead of Cambridge’s 82.9% and ranks Oxford sixth overall behind Buckingham; Harper Adams, the small specialist agricultural university college; the Open University; Leicester; and sporting Loughborough.
Statistics can go only so far, however, in revealing the true quality of the higher education on offer here. With more than 900 years of history behind it, Oxford remains among the most coveted of university places, standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Harvard and Yale.
Providing world-class education doesn’t come cheap, and the university launched the Oxford Thinking fundraising campaign last year, with the aim of raising £1.25 billion.
“Building the endowments of the colleges and of the university is a critical undertaking for this university and for sustaining its position of leadership into the future,” says Hood.
For better or worse, Oxford’s formidable reputation precedes it. Writing “University of Oxford” on a Ucas form can be a daunting proposition for an A-level student. The interview process, the manicured quads of the colleges and the one-to-one tutorials with subject experts, can make the university, which claims to be the oldest in the English-speaking world, seem impenetrable to a pupil at an inner-city state school.
Certainly, Oxford remains dogged by accusations relating to the imbalance of admissions from the state and private school sectors. Just over 53% were admitted last year from state schools, a figure that remains stubbornly low — and significantly adrift of Cambridge — despite extensive efforts to prompt more such applications. The university has adopted a double-pronged approach to tackle this head-on, ensuring the admissions process is rigorous but fair, and encouraging more applications from the state sector in the first place.
The UNIQ summer school, run with the Sutton Trust, gives state school pupils the experience of being an Oxford student for a week, at no cost to them. Judging by the figures, the initiative is working — of those who go on to apply to Oxford, about 40% are offered a place, compared with the average success rate of 25%.
However, Oxford doesn’t limit its outreach projects to those that will boost its 53% state school admissions figure. This statistic doesn’t reveal the extensive work that Mike Nicholson, the director of undergraduate admissions, oversees in promoting higher education both locally and around the country. “It’s important work that we’re doing and feel a responsibility to do,” says Nicholson.
“There are only ever going to be about 3,100 students who come to Oxford each year. What we’re trying to do is ensure that we are supporting students who are living in Oxfordshire who may never have thought about university. If we’re not going to go and talk to them, who is? We see that as a broader social responsibility.”
Last year more than 1,300 outreach initiatives were run, with Oxford having contact with about 80% of all secondary schools. Nicholson expects that figure to rise this year.
Adamant that hardship shouldn’t be a barrier to studying, the Oxford Opportunity bursary scheme was launched in 2006. This awards money to students with household incomes of up to £49,999. Those from families earning £25,000 or below receive £3,225 (covering the current top-up fees), and an extra £875 start-up award is given to undergraduates from households whose incomes fall below £17,999.
“My plea to all talented senior school pupils is that if you feel you have the potential to come to this university, then please apply,” says Hood. “We would love to see your application.”
Oxford beat University College London into runner-up position in this year’s Sunday Times awards. UCL won our University of the Year title in 2004 and this year climbs to fourth, its highest ever position, in our league table. It edges Oxford and Cambridge in the proportion of its leavers who get graduate-level jobs (85.6%), ranking fifth in the UK, and its level of outright graduate unemployment at 5.4% is a full two percentage points below Oxbridge. UCL students give it a 76.5% satisfaction score, which ranks it third in London (where NSS scores struggle) behind the part-timers at Birkbeck and the University of Greenwich.
Birmingham, Glasgow and Stirling complete our shortlist for UK University of the Year, with Stirling carrying off the Scottish title. Glasgow was runner-up north of the border, two years after winning the award outright.
Stirling is another big winner in our league table, climbing 10 places this year to rank 32. Its designation last year as Scotland’s University for Sporting Excellence recognised the outstanding facilities now on offer to students there. While sport is core to the university’s mission, several other of its founding principles have survived the 42 years since students first set foot on campus. Chief among them is the international air to studying here, which is partly fostered by the close-knit campus, where just under 3,000 students live and work. There is a long history of recruiting students from North America, while at postgraduate level, there is a strong contingent from India and China.
Glasgow ranks 22= this year, another university to appear in its highest ever position. One of the Russell Group of 20 research-led universities, Glasgow has closed the gap on Edinburgh chiefly through achieving levels of student satisfaction that Edinburgh can only dream of. Glasgow’s 80.5% score under a Sunday Times analysis of NSS results ranks it 14 in the UK, while Edinburgh ranks 108=. Glasgow achieves one of the highest NSS scores of any inner-city university.
Birmingham completes our shortlist. Back in our elite top 20 for the first time since 2001, the university combines an excellent teaching record with cutting-edge research. This year it became the first of what will be a chain of Cancer Research UK centres.
All our winners demonstrate the benefits of a robust higher education system. Their purpose is not just to churn out the hundreds of thousands of students who leave each year with degrees, but to tackle the broader challenges that face mankind.
Your Comments
Order By: