Oxford University came in second place in the Guardian’s 2019 University league tables, beaten to the top spot by Cambridge University for the eighth consecutive year.
Oxford received a score of 97.4, compared to Cambridge’s 100. Its next rival, St Andrews, was only a fifth of a point behind, on 97.2. It is the third year in a row that these three universities have occupied the top three spots.
Oxford came joint top in the Guardian’s table in the ‘spend per student’ category, which evaluates how much each university spends on its students excluding academic staff costs.
It also fared well in the ‘satisfied with course’ and ‘student to staff ratio’ categories, placing in second in both categories.
However, Oxford performed less well when it came to student satisfaction with feedback, coming in the bottom 20 institutions across the UK.
Oxford was also considered the best university for a handful of courses that included Anthropology, Business and Management, Chemistry, Economics, and Mathematics.
Elsewhere, Nottingham Trent University performed well by breaking into the top 20, rising from 34th in 2018 to 16th, whereas SOAS suffered and dropped from 25th in 2018 to 58th this year.
The top 10 universities were:
- Cambridge
- Oxford
- St Andrews
- Loughborough
- Durham
- Bath
- Imperial College
- Warwick
- Lancaster
- Leeds
Oxford has not come first in the newspaper’s rankings since 2011.
