The Russell Group unis where students are the most fed up with their uni experience, according to The Times

As October arrives and we all enter our sad girl autumn eras, we’ve figured out which Russell Group unis the students are suffering at the most. As part of The Times and the Sunday Times’s new uni rankings, it figured out a “student experience” score for each UK uni in 2024, including the Russell Group ones.

The Times explains how it figured out the student experience score here. Basically, it combined loads of data from the most recent National Student Survey that was connected to how satisfied students were with how their degrees were taught, how the university is managed, and how much they’d enjoyed their degrees.

Russell Group unis are really not the happiest places in the UK. Russell must have picked his group based on research quality and prestige, not on whether students actually liked them. The University of Sheffield and the University of Warwick are the only Russell Group unis to make it into the top 20 UK unis for student experience. On the other hand, the bottom 20 UK unis for student experience include six Russell Group unis.

The University of Sheffield is the Russell Group uni with the happiest vibes in 2024. 83.1 per cent of students had a good experience. Over 80 per cent of students at the University of Warwick and the University of Liverpool also had a good time. They must really be living, laughing and loving over there.

The students at Oxbridge seem to be extra unhappy. The University of Oxford has the most miserable students in 2024 out of all the Russell Group unis. Only 71.1 per cent of the students there felt that they’d had a positive university experience. The University of Cambridge isn’t far behind it, with only 73.3 per cent of the students having a good experience. These student experience scores explain why Oxbridge has been slipping down in The Times’s uni rankings in recent years. This year, The Uni of Oxford and the Uni of Cambridge were dethroned by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the University of St Andrews in The Times’s overall ranking. Who would have thought that students who study non-stop in buildings with medieval plumbing might not be so cheerful? *Acts surprised*.

Without further faffing, here are the Russell Group unis ranked by their student experience scores for 2024 in The Times. So, number one is the Russell Group uni where students are the most miserable, and number 24 has the happiest vibes.

24. University of Sheffield – 83.1 per cent

23. University of Warwick – 82.4 per cent

22. University of Liverpool – 80.7 per cent

21. Imperial College London – 79.9 per cent

=19. University of Exeter – 79.6 per cent

=19. London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) – 79.6 per cent

18. Queen’s University, Belfast – 79.4 per cent

17. University College London (UCL) – 78.3 per cent

16. University of York – 77.9 per cent

15. Newcastle University – 77.3 per cent

14. University of Nottingham – 77.2 per cent

13. University of Southampton – 76.8 per cent

12. University of Birmingham – 73.6 per cent

=10. Durham University – 76.1 per cent

=10. Cardiff University – 76.1 per cent

9. Queen Mary University of London – 76.0 per cent

8. University of Bristol – 75.9 per cent

7. University of Leeds – 75.6 per cent

6. University of Glasgow – 73.8 per cent

=4. University of Cambridge – 73.3 per cent

=4. King’s College London – 73.3 per cent

3. University of Manchester – 72.9 per cent

2. University of Edinburgh – 72.5 per cent

1. University of Oxford – 71.1 per cent

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