Shropshire university in podium spot among Good University Guide West Midlands establishments
Two of the region's universities have made it into the top three spaces in the West Midlands on the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide for 2021.
The University of Birmingham, 19th of all establishments in the UK, is ranked second in the West Midlands while Harper Adams University near Newport in Shropshire takes third place.
They are only behind the University of Warwick, which is ranked 10th nationally. Aston University and Coventry University fill out the top five in the West Midlands.
Varsity opponents Keele University and Staffordshire University are sixth and seventh respectively.
Birmingham City University is eighth and is followed by the University of Worcester, Newman University and the University of Wolverhampton.
Harper Adams boasted the highest rates of student satisfaction of the 11 universities, with teaching quality surveyed at 84.6 per cent and student experience at 82.7.
The vice-chancellor Dr David Lewellyn said: “It is pleasing to see that we are still ranked as one of the best universities in the region, with particularly strong performance for the quality of our teaching.
"We look forward to welcoming Shropshire students, alongside those from further afield, who are starting their studies in the coming weeks, and we hope the guide will also help those considering their choice of university for entry in 2021. They can find out more about us, our courses, which include an industry placement, and the varied careers to which our programmes lead, at one of our forthcoming virtual opening days, highlighted on our website.”
Meanwhile the University of Birmingham scored high in its level of graduate prospects with 84.7 per cent of graduates in professional jobs or graduate-level study. Its completion rate for degrees was also high at 94.6 per cent.
Indicators
Aston University improved its national ranking from 43rd last year to 48th this time, while Birmingham City went from 96th to 90th.
Wolverhampton had an 80.5 per cent mark of satisfaction on teaching quality.
The new edition of The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2021, a free 96-page supplement, will be published this weekend in The Sunday Times (September 20).
It includes profiles on 135 universities and the definitive UK university rankings, making use of the latest data published in the past two months. A fully searchable website with university profiles and 67 subject tables will be available at thetimes.co.uk/article/good-university-guide-in-full-tp6dzs7wn today for subscribers to The Times and The Sunday Times.
Readers can also join in the conversation online by using the hashtag #GoodUniGuide.
The academic league table is made up of nine indicators including student satisfaction with teaching quality and their wider student experience, research quality, graduate prospects, entrance qualifications held by new students, degree results achieved, student/staff ratios, service and facilities spend, and degree completion rates.
A social inclusion ranking rates universities in England and Wales (with a separate Scottish ranking) on key measures to reflect the diversity of their intake and subsequent success when attending university.
The league table is made up of eight indicators (seven in Scotland) covering the proportions of entrants recruited from non-selective state schools, ethnic minorities, and areas of low participation in higher education (high social deprivation in Scotland); those who are first generation students, mature or disabled; the black attainment gap; and in England and Wales, the gap between the dropout rate of students from the areas of the country with the lowest participation rates in higher education, compared to the rate for students from the rest of the country.
