These Russell Group unis have the most overcrowded lectures and classes in 2025

We’re approaching exam season – aka the only time of year UK unis students actually do any work. Some uni lectures seem more crowded than a Sabrina Carpenter concert. This is because the number of students per staff member varies loads at different Russell Group unis.

As part of Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings 2025, they figured out exactly how many students there are for each staff member. This gives a pretty strong indication of which unis are cramming the most students into each lecture and seminar.

The bad news is that Russell Group unis have more students per staff member than they used to. Five years ago, Russell Group unis had an average of 13.2 students per staff members. Now, the average is 14.1 students per staff member. So getting a good seat in a lecturer hall is objectively more competitive than it used to be. So many Russell Group unis are cutting jobs in 2025, that your lectures are likely to get even more overcrowded.

It’s not really a shock that the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge have fewer students per staff members. Oxbridge’s main personality trait is that all the students have supervisions and tutorials, in which one or two students at a time get interrogated by a leading professor on their speciality. What is surprising is that University College London (UCL) actually has a better student to staff ratio than the University of Cambridge does. Quite a few other Russell Group unis – Imperial College London, University of Edinburgh and the London School of Economics and Political Science – didn’t have drastically different student to staff ratios than the University of Cambridge.

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So, here are all the Russell Group unis with the most overcrowded lectures in 2025, based on the number of students per one member of staff:

24. University of Oxford – 10.8 students per staff member

23. University College London (UCL) – 11.1 students per staff member

22. University of Cambridge – 11.5 students per staff member

A rare image of a Cambridge student not doing work

21. Imperial College London – 12.1 students per staff member

20. University of Edinburgh – 12.2 students per staff member

19. London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) – 12.3 students per staff member

18. Durham University – 13.7 students per staff member

17. University of Liverpool – 13.8 students per staff member

16. King’s College London – 14.0 students per staff member

15. University of Warwick – 14.2 students per staff member

14. Newcastle University – 14.4 students per staff member

13. University of Bristol – 14.5 students per staff member

12. Cardiff University – 14.6 students per staff member

11. University of Southampton – 14.7 students per staff member

10. University of Birmingham – 14.8 students per staff member

I still don’t get the hype about this wretched clock tower at Brum

9. University of Sheffield – 14.9 students per staff member

=6. University of Manchester – 15.1 students per staff member

=6. University of Leeds – 15.1 students per staff member

=6. University of Glasgow – 15.1 students per staff member

5. University of York – 15.3 students per staff member

4. Queen Mary University of London – 15.7 students per staff member

3. University of Nottingham – 16.1 students per staff member

2. Queen’s University Belfast – 16.6 students per staff member

1. University of Exeter – 16.9 students per staff member

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