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The University of Oxford has placed first in The Guardian’s annual guide to universities for the first time in a decade, thanks to new employment data showing that more Oxford students are moving to graduate jobs after completing His studies.
This year’s Guardian university guide sees Oxford rise from third to first, while St Andrews University remains in second place and Oxford’s longtime rival Cambridge drops to third after occupying first place for nine. years.
Several other universities improved their performance in the ranking thanks to the new graduate jobs data.
The London School of Economics was ranked second alongside Oxford and Cambridge for postgraduate work, allowing it to jump to fifth overall from 19 and re-enter the top 10 for the first time since 2015. The LSE improvement was it was favored by the great demand for graduates in economics and law, two of its main subject areas.
It was further boosted by higher grades from its own students, who gave LSE better marks in course satisfaction, assessment and teaching, where it had previously lagged behind its rivals.
The University of Brighton was also helped by a huge improvement in its graduate work score, raising it 12 places to 102.
At the other end of the scale, De Montfort University saw its graduate work score drop, contributing to its drop from 61st to 119th overall.
The results come as British universities are turning cautiously optimistic that most have avoided the worst-case scenarios predicted in the wake of the global coronavirus outbreak and the confusion in test scores that engulfed UK schools.
Several institutions have said that student recruitment has been sustained across the board, with few domestic students opting to postpone their studies, while the number of international students appears not to have decreased as feared.
Oxford Vice Chancellor Louise Richardson said her institution was on track to admit a record number of UK pupils educated to state schools after it decided to honor offers made to applicants affected by the exam fiasco.
Interim figures from Oxford show that around 68% of its national admission will come from state schools this year, an increase of more than six percent from 2019. The university expects to enroll 350 more college students than its normal admission, with the In order to offer as many places as necessary. possible.
Richardson says he expects the side effects on applicants next year to be small.
“Necessarily, there will be fewer places next year than we have this year, because we have taken much more than we anticipated. We will do our best to take as much as possible next year, ”Richardson said.
“I think we will handle it in such a way that the numbers will be so small, on any issue, that no one will feel it.”
Cambridge said it has also expanded its number of university students by 10% as a result of the exam fiasco, and that 70% of its new UK university students were educated in public schools. She said none of her students would need to defer for a year.
Last year, St Andrews was the first university to split the Oxbridge duopoly at the top of the table, and it did so again this year, retaining its second place overall.
Sally Mapstone, Principal of St. Andrews, said: “This ranking is significant because it comes at a difficult time for students across the country who have experienced a year like no other and are facing a very different college experience.
“It is so important that while we encourage students to observe safe behavior, we empower and support them to demonstrate what they can do during these highly restrictive times.”
The Guardian university guide is the first leaderboard to use new data that measures graduates ‘jobs 15 months after graduation instead of six months, and is believed to more accurately capture graduates’ employability.
Data is collected centrally by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, rather than by individual colleges, to address concerns that colleges were messing with their performance by misclassifying their graduates’ occupations or offering them temporary employment during the survey period.
Imperial scored highest in overall graduate results, but moved from 7th to 9th due to recruiting students with lower grades. King’s College London soared from 63rd to 42nd after climbing from 21st to 5th in the data for new graduate jobs.
In individual subject rankings, Anglia Ruskin topped the table in two areas, sports science and education, while ranking 80th overall. Bournemouth climbed 10 places to claim the top spot in social work, again thanks to new graduate job data.
Matt Hiely-Rayner, who compiled the tables, said that Oxford outperformed Cambridge after a decade because the new employment data erased Cambridge’s lead: “With Cambridge’s advantage in career prospects removed, Oxford’s advantage in value-added metrics shine to elevate the university to the first place, ”he said.
Oxford also outperformed Cambridge on a number of subject classifications, including English, law, physics, and economics.
Richardson said Oxford’s strong value-added performance was a credit to its students and to the university’s dynamic selection process.
“The socio-economic and ethnic diversity of our undergraduate student body has been transformed in the last five years and we see this as a great success. We are very proud of our achievement here, ”Richardson said.
