Mark of excellence
Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:30:00 BST
TEACHING standards at the University of Huddersfield are the best in Yorkshire, according to one of the most respected guides to higher education.
Also, its students are the most likely to land jobs soon after graduation.
Impressive results in these and other categories mean that Huddersfield has continued to climb the rankings in The Sunday Times University Guide. The new edition, which offers guidance to students selecting a university in 2012, shows that Huddersfield has risen five places to 60th in the overall league table and is now comfortably established inside the top half of the UK’s universities and colleges.
The Sunday Times Guide, which has an estimated readership of three million, has been published for the past 14 years. The latest edition places heavy emphasis on student satisfaction and has drawn on the 2011 National Student Survey (NSS) in order to analyse categories such as teaching quality, academic support, assessment and feedback.
The result was that the University of Huddersfield scored 79.8 per cent in the teaching excellence category of the guide. This is higher than any other Yorkshire university, by a margin of up to eight per cent.
Compilers of the new guide also found that 94 per cent of Huddersfield students were in work or further study six months after graduation. Again, this figure is the best in Yorkshire and nationally it places Huddersfield among the top 15 universities for graduate employability.
The Sunday Times guide also highlights Huddersfield’s success at widening participation in higher education – with 20 per cent of its 2009-10 intake coming from ethnic minority backgrounds, and 40 per cent from lower income homes.
But although the University of Huddersfield scores highly in several crucial categories, from 2012 its standard tuition fee of £7,950 will be one of the lowest in the UK and the lowest in Yorkshire, by a margin of more than £1,000 in many cases.
Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor Tim Thornton was very pleased with the result: “Our average NSS score and our graduate employment rates are now some of the best in the country, and we’re delighted that our students feel so well supported and inspired on their professional courses.”
