THE Student Experience Survey results have dropped – and it isn’t good news for Cambridge

The best universities in the UK for student experience as decided by current students have been revealed – and the results paint a worrying picture for Cambridge.

Despite ranking highest among all UK universities in 2018 according to researchers at the QS Intelligence Unit, students rated Cambridge 18th in the country – behind Lancaster University, the University of Nottingham and Edge Hill University.

The survey asked 20,251 undergrads to describe how their university contributed to a positive or negative experience on a sliding scale across seven main categories.

For the fifth time since 2009, Loughborough topped the league table, put together by the highly-respected Times Higher Education supplement.

'Cambridge face relegation fight'

Cambridge came above Oxford in only two of the classes, pipping the Other Place in the less-than-crucial categories of accommodation and industry connections.

Damningly, Cambridge came only fourth in the country for academic experience. Harper Adams University, a specialist agricultural college in Shropshire, headed up the top three, followed by Oxford and St Andrews.

This meant there were no excuses for Cambridge ranking 41st when students were asked about the quality of their welfare support.

Surprise, surprise: the social life was rated the relative worst part of the Cambridge student experience. In spite of Big Fish Ents’ best efforts, the university was 46th best.

CUSU president, Daisy Eyre, commented on "the University's ratings on welfare and workload" which "have been falling steeply for the last decade. The University of Cambridge must take meaningful action on this and this will be my main focus for next term." However, Eyre does draw attention to one of the more positive results for the University of Cambridge: "It is really exciting to see that student satisfaction with the SU has really improved this year according to these metrics. This year, we have worked so hard to make a difference in this university and also to communicate this to students and it seems like our efforts are paying off!"

Former president of Student Minds Cambridge, Keir Murison, takes a more critical stance on Cambridge's performance in the THE Student Experience Survey. "It is very disappointing that Cambridge, which continues to claim to be ahead of the curve in terms of teaching and academic success lag so far behind in this critical area. Their inability to recognise that students who are well supported and not overworked are able to perform much better academically. Coming in as one of the lowest Russell group and significantly below Oxford shows Cambridge really needs to start listening to the calls of its students to sort out its welfare problems"

Guess we all knew what we signed up for when we came to Cambridge.