County university ranked region’s best in top guide

LOUGHBOROUGH University has been named the top-ranked university in the East Midlands, according to The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2021.

Loughborough ranked highly across its courses - and the only universities that rank higher for more subjects are Cambridge and Oxford.

It scored highest for building, communication and media studies, criminology, librarianship and information management.

The guide also found the county university has an excellent reputation for engineering, with almost 3,000 students and a longstanding campus collaboration with Rolls- Royce to develop low-emission, high-efficiency engines to reduce aircraft pollution.

Nationally, Loughborough ranked 7th in the UK, dropping from 5th in the previous year. It received a score of 82.4 per cent score on the National Student Survey for teaching quality, 84.8 per cent for student experience, 83.6 per cent for graduate prospects and has a 93.3 completion rate.

Loughborough came in first for the East Midlands, ahead of the University of Nottingham in second.

The University of Leicester came in third in the region, and 37th nationally, up four places from the year before. De Montfort University came in last place out of the eight universities in the region, as defined by The Times, and 119th nationally dropping from 74th place the year before.

Nottingham was also named as Sports University of the Year, ahead of Loughborough, partly due to competitions being suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.

When competition was suspended in March, Nottingham sat on top of the inter-university league run by British Universities and Colleges Sport (Bucs), ahead of Loughborough, winners of the title for the past four decades.

However, last season’s points table was declared void.

Alastair McCall, editor of The

Sunday Times Good University Guide, said: “The judges felt some sympathy for Nottingham with the annulling of last season’s points competition.

“No-one will ever know if they could have held on to the top spot over the remaining weeks of the season. Loughborough will tell you not, but we felt Nottingham deserved recognition for their achievements in the 2019-20 season.”

The full rankings are:

Loughborough University University of Nottingham University of Leicester University of Lincoln Nottingham Trent University Bishop Grosseteste University University of Derby De Montfort University