The Times Good University Guide ranking is here – and a really surprising uni beat Oxbridge
Oxbridge flopped like the new Katy Perry album
The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide – the oldest league table that your parents get the most oddly competitive about – is back for 2024. The winning university is a massive surprise because it’s literally never topped a major UK unis ranking before 2024.
The Times explains how it actually comes up with all these rankings here. Universities a scored on a variety of factors including graduate prospects, research quality and how happy the students said they were in the 2023 and 2024 National Student Survey.
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) has jumped up three places in the league table to the number one spot. The Times gave it a perfect score of 1000. LSE has never topped the Times league table before. The Times also awarded LSE University of the Year 2025. Does it get a medal and a nice bunch of flowers?
The University of Sheffield was this year’s runner up for University of the Year 2025 award, even though it came in 14th place on the league tables.
Oxbridge students will be pissed because the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge have been dethroned by both LSE and the University of St Andrews. The Times put Oxford above Cambridge in its ranking of UK unis. The main difference in their scores came from student-staff ratio – Oxford has 10.3 students for each staff member, while Cambridge has 11.6 – and The Times’s “People & Planet” category. The Times explains here that it rates “universities’ performance on environmental indicators”, including how much recycling the uni does, how much money the uni has tied up in fossil fuel investments, and how environmentally the food served in campus canteens is. The University of Cambridge has a People & Planet score of 46.7, while the University of Oxford has a way higher score of 49.4.
Although Russell Group unis are supposed to be the most prestigious unis in the UK or whatever, The Times put some of them pretty far down in its ranking. Queen Mary University of London came 39th and Cardiff University came 32nd. Newcastle University and the University of Nottingham tied for 30th place. Three of the top ten unis – the University of St Andrews, the University of Bath and Loughborough University – aren’t Russell Group unis at all.
The Times still thinks that St Andrews is the best university in Scotland. Although St Andrews has dropped from the top spot on the league tables, it still came miles higher than the University of Aberdeen, the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh. The University of Aberdeen has risen four spots to 15th place, and so has beaten both Glasgow and Edinburgh, which came 16th and 17th. Ouch.
Imperial College London has fallen to a measly sixth place on The Times league table, even though the Daily Mail put it first in their UK unis ranking this year and it’s the best uni for snapping up a high-skilled grad job.
According to The Times, the worst university in the country is the Royal Agricultural University. This uni fell a very dramatic 27 places to the bottom of the league tables. It scored just 237 points. Only 68 per cent of students there get a 2:1 or a first. Despite being a uni dedicated to plants and animals, the Royal Agricultural University scored especially badly in the environmental category. The Times gave it a really low People & Planet score of 18.3
So, without further rambling, here actually is the full ranking of all 131 UK unis in The Times Good University Guide:
1. London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
2. University of St Andrews
3. University of Oxford
4. University of Cambridge
5. Durham University
6. Imperial College London
7. University College London (UCL)
8. University of Bath
9. University of Warwick
10. Loughborough University
11. University of Bristol
12. Lancaster University
13. University of Exeter
14. University of Sheffield
15. University of Aberdeen
16. University of Glasgow
=17. University of Edinburgh
=17. University of York
19. University of Southampton
20. University of Strathclyde
21. University of Surrey
22. University of Birmingham
23. University of Liverpool
=24. King’s College London
=24. University of Reading
26. Queen’s University, Belfast
=27. University of Leicester
=27. University of Manchester
29. University of Leeds
=30. Newcastle University
=30. University of Nottingham
32. Cardiff University
33. University of East Anglia (UEA)
34. Royal Holloway, University of London
35. Aston University
36. University of Dundee
37. Swansea University
38. University of Sussex
39. Queen Mary University of London
=40. University of Kent
=40. University of the Arts London
42. Nottingham Trent University
43. Northumbria University
44. Glasgow Caledonian University
45. Ulster University
=46. Manchester Metropolitan University
=46. University of Essex
48. Aberystwyth University
49. City, University of London
50. Oxford Brookes University
51. Heriot-Watt University
52. St Mary’s University, Twickenham
53. Harper Adams University
54. Coventry University
55. University of Portsmouth
56. University of Lincoln
=57. Keele University
=57. University of West London
59. Edinburgh Napier University
60. University of Hull
61. Robert Gordon University
62. University of Chichester
63. University of Stirling
64. Bangor University
65. SOAS University of London
=66. Cardiff Metropolitan University
=66. Liverpool John Moores University
68. University of the West of England
69. St George’s, University of London
70. University of Plymouth
71. University of Brighton
72. University of Salford
73. Falmouth University
74. Abertay University
75. Plymouth Marjon University
76. Bath Spa University
77. University of Derby
=78. Arts University Bournemouth
=78. University of Huddersfield
80. Goldsmiths, University of London
81. Norwich University of the Arts
82. Bournemouth University
83. University of Hertfordshire
=84. Edge Hill University
=84. Sheffield Hallam University
86. Bishop Grosseteste University
87. University for the Creative Arts
88. Leeds Beckett University
89. University of Chester
=90. Birmingham Newman University
=90. University of Gloucestershire
92. Leeds Arts University
93. York St John University
=94. Liverpool Hope University
=94. University of South Wales
96. University of Central Lancashire
97. Kingston University
98. Solent University
99. University of Worcester
100. London South Bank University
101. Staffordshire University
102. University of Greenwich
103. University of Winchester
104. Teesside University
=105. Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh
=105. University of Sunderland
=107. Birmingham City University
=107. Brunel University London
109. Canterbury Christ Church University
110. University of Wales Trinity St David
111. University of Bradford
112. Leeds Trinity University
113. De Montfort University
114. University of Buckingham
115. Wrexham University
116. Hartpury University
117. Middlesex University
118. University of Roehampton
119. University of Bolton
120. University of Westminster
121. University of the West of Scotland
122. Buckinghamshire New University
123. University of Wolverhampton
124. University of Suffolk
125. University of Northampton
126. University of East London
127. London Metropolitan University
128. University of Cumbria
129. University of Bedfordshire
130. Anglia Ruskin University
131. Royal Agricultural University