These are the unis raking in profits big enough to buy a small island somewhere

Knowing them, it’d probably turn into Fyre festival with lecture capture


Statistics for the 2019/20 academic year have revealed which unis are making the craziest profits.

Top of the list is Oxford, which made £390 million, followed by UCL, which “only” made £206 million.

In fact, there were eight unis who made over £100 million in profit. That’s more than enough to buy the island of Rai, in Thailand. At £114 million, it’s reckoned to be the most expensive private island on offer right now.

Here are the top 25 unis making the biggest profits:

1. The University of Oxford: £390,815,000
2. University College London: £206,602,000
3. The University of Edinburgh: £191,610,000
4. The University of Sheffield: £128,315,000
5. The University of Warwick: £122,094,000
6. The University of Manchester: £118,888,000
7. The University of Leeds: £112,124,000
8. The University of Cambridge: £105,067,000
9. The University of Glasgow: £98,763,000
10. The University of Southampton: £96,619,000
11. King’s College London: £96,096,000
12. University of Nottingham: £93,989,000
13. The University of Bristol: £82,381,000
14. London School of Economics and Political Science: £81,097,000
15. University of Durham: £75,937,000
16. Queen Mary University of London: £71,300,000
17. Cardiff University: £69,250,000
18. The University of Birmingham: £68,456,000
19. The University of Exeter: £67,672,000
20. Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine: £64,784,000
21. Newcastle University: £58,264,000
22. Queen’s University Belfast: £54,838,000
23. The University of Liverpool: £54,708,000
24. Loughborough University: £54,696,000
25. The University of Lancaster: £54,390,000

Data: HESA finance data for 2019/20 academic year, calculated as total income minus total expenditure

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