Updated.
In a league table published today by the Complete University Guide, the University of York has fallen out of the top ten universities in the UK for 2012.
Slipping two places since last year, the University now ranks 12th, the place occupied last year by Bath University, who have claimed York’s place at number ten. The University was particularly slammed for its graduate prospects, in which it came 35th in the country.
A second year History student told Vision that she thought it was “disappointing to see we’ve slipped, but not altogether surprising. Hopefully this will prompt the university to invest more in what students do after they graduate.”
The league tables are based primarily on universities’ entry standards, student satisfaction, research assessment and graduate prospects. It also takes into account the proportion of good honours results, student-staff ratios, spending on academic services, spending on facilities, proportion of degree completion, and environmental credentials. This year the University of York had a good result for student satisfaction, which is based on the results of the National Student Survey (NSS), receiving a score of 4.1, the same as Cambridge, and higher than eight of the eleven universities placed above it.
Nearly 90% of final year students at York who responded to the 2009 NSS expressed satisfaction with the teaching of their courses.
The University of York was praised once again for the standard of its teaching as research. Its research score, which reflects how advanced faculties are in their respective fields, was 2.78 and higher than Durham and St Andrews who placed fifth and sixth, respectively.
Twelve departments ranked in the top ten nationally, including Archaeology, Chemistry, English, History, Linguistics and Psychology. It was also noted in the published report that York has amongst the highest proportion of research activity at world-leading 4* status of any UK university, and it rated eighth nationally for research excellence. It also has the highest average score for teaching quality in the entire British university sector.
However it was Graduate Prospects which let the university down, for which it received a score of just 68.2, placing it 35th for this category. Bath, contrastingly, scored 77.9 in the same list. York also received a low Green Score of just 31.5, ranking 25th, and in the overall report the Complete University Guide noted that while many institutions had pledged to drastically cut emissions, some appeared slow or reluctant to act on these promises.
This is the first time in the past few years that the University has fallen in the tables. In 2008 it placed 14th, moving up to 11th in 2009. For 2010 it reached Top Ten status when it ranked 10th and remained static in tenth place for 2011. This year, Cambridge claimed the top spot for the first time since 2007, and only the second time in a decade.
The University issued a statement, saying: “With 12 subjects in the top 10 nationally, we are one of the UK’s leading universities. While a slight fall in our overall ranking in the CUG is disappointing, teaching and research at York remain of the highest calibre and the development of our campus continues to enhance the student experience.”
A YUSU spokesman was unavailable for comment at the time of publishing.
What were our rankings in 2000-7?
Always top ten, and usually about 7th, I think.
And what’s the V-C salary now compared with then?
(BTW the Graduate Training Unit says the poor quality
of destinations is because York’s so nice that we all
want to stay here and work in bookshops. It’s that
kind of complacency that’s stopping improvement.)
Meh English moved up to 5th, just behind Cambridge! Hopefully this’ll propel the university into investing more into the careers service