Durham falls out of the top five in Good University Guide
By Clara Gaspar
Durham University has been ranked as the UK’s seventh best university, according to The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2019.
Taking into consideration all social, financial and academic criteria, the guide rated Durham as 7th in the UK university league tables, falling two places from last year and having been overtaken by Loughborough University and Lancaster University.
Durham is the university with the 3rd highest rate of top degrees in the country after Oxford and Cambridge, with 90.8 of all degrees being first and upper second class honours.
Two of Durham University’s subjects, Geography and Music, were ranked 1st of all universities in the UK.
Meanwhile, sixteen of the University’s subjects were ranked in the UK’s top five and every subject fell within the top 20.
This year’s statistics saw a drop in the standard of teaching from 82% to 78.8%. This figure comes from the proportion of positive responses from students to statements in the 2018 National Student Survey (NSS).
The guide also saw Durham improve in areas such as graduate prospects rating and student completion rates.
However, of the guide’s top 11 universities in the overall institution ranking, Durham’s student to staff ratio is the poorest.
Durham University was also rated 97th for student satisfaction.
Professor Stuart Corbridge, Durham Vice-Chancellor and Warden, told Palatinate: “Durham University continues to be ranked as a top ten UK university, and our students benefit from a world-class education and student experience which benefits them when they graduate.
“The slight fall in our ranking in this league table is due to a small drop in this year’s National Student Survey (NSS) scores. We are never complacent and will be working with our staff and students to secure improvements.”
Photograph: Creative Commons via Wikipedia
