27 April 2015 10:21

Lancaster University has risen 2 places to be ranked 9th nationally out of 126 UK universities and is the leading university in the North West according to the TheCompleteUniversityGuide.co.uk for 2016, published on Monday 27 April. 

Lancaster has charged ahead of its Russell Group peers in the region, the University of Manchester and University of Liverpool.

The other top ten universities are Cambridge in first place, Oxford, LSE, Imperial College London, Durham, St Andrews, Warwick, Surrey, and University College London.

In separate listings covering 67 subjects, Lancaster appears in national top ten listings for 14 of the 33 subjects it offers, topping the table for Social Work. Other subjects ranked in the top ten are Accounting and Finance, Art and Design, Business and Management Studies, Communications and Media Studies, Drama, Dance and Cinematics, French, General Engineering, Iberian Languages, Italian, linguistics, Marketing, Social Policy and Religious Studies.

Lancaster is ranked highly for graduate prospects with 78% of students going on to graduate level employment or further study.  Expenditure on student facilities such as sports, careers services, health and counselling was also ranked highly at Lancaster.

The table is based on ten measures: student satisfaction, research quality, research intensity, entry standards, student/staff ratio, spending on academic services, spending on student facilities, good honours degrees achieved, graduate prospects and completion.

The 67 Subject tables are based on five measures: student satisfaction, research quality, research intensity, entry standards and graduate prospects.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Mark E. Smith said:

“The reputation of Lancaster is reflected by high rankings year-on-year in each of the UK's major university league tables and the number of students applying to study here has soared with the increase in numbers this year well above the national average.

“Top ten rankings, a strong employability record and a clutch of awards for our beautiful and increasingly environmentally sustainable campus has made the University more popular than ever.”

Lancaster has been rated as the best value for money university in England, and is located in one of the UK's top 10 most vibrant cities.

Lancaster’s accommodation has won the 'Best University Halls' award in the National Student Housing Survey of 120 UK institutions for the last five years running and is one of only five institutions to achieve an International Accommodation Quality Mark, marking high levels of satisfaction among our international students.

As one of the few collegiate universities in the UK, students are welcomed to one of eight distinctive undergraduate colleges on campus and one dedicated to postgraduate students.

Colleges are independent of a student's field of study, making for a lively, welcoming and diverse community where it's easy to make new friends with students of many nationalities.