Oxbridge duo dominate top spots
Scottish law schools appear to be outperforming many of their English counterparts.
This was one of the eye-catching results published this week in the 2021 Complete University Guide.
The Universities of Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Strathclyde feature in the top ten for law, while Dundee sits just outside in 11th position. The University of Stirling climbed four spots to round off the top twenty.
The top of the league table comes as no surprise: the University of Cambridge came first with an overall score of 100%, the highest of any institution, while the University of Oxford climbed two places in this year’s rankings to come second. London-based universities UCL and King’s College come in at third and fourth place, respectively.
Glasgow (5th), Aberdeen (6th), Edinburgh (7th) and Strathclyde (8th) come next, followed by Russell Group institution, the LSE, which has slipped three places down to ninth position. Durham University ranks in tenth place.
The rest of the top twenty features English universities (bar Dundee and Stirling). The University of Nottingham sticks with twelfth position, followed by the Universities of Exeter (13th), Leeds (14th), Lancaster (15th) and York (16th). Queen’s University Belfast finishes in seventeenth, followed by the University of Sheffield at eighteenth. The University of Bristol has dropped five places to nineteenth.
The results are based on entry standards, student satisfaction, research quality, research intensity and graduate prospects.
There are some notable rises further down the power list of 103 universities. Abertay University, another Scottish uni, for example, has jumped a total of 11 places to feature 28th. The University of Sunderland has leaped 21 places to come 56th.
Elsewhere, Glasgow Caledonian University has ranked higher (23rd) than the Universities of Birmingham (24th), Warwick (25th), Southampton (26th), Queen Mary (27th), Cardiff (30th) and Liverpool (35th), all of whom are Russell Group members.
Today’s rankings come amid concerns that some students may defer their university places for next year since teaching and maybe even socials such as fresher’s week(!) will move online in view of the coronavirus pandemic. One in five students plan to defer their studies, a recent study has found, costing British universities a potential £760 million blow.
Cambridge last month announced that all of its lectures, including those run by its law faculty, will be conducted online until next summer, while the University of Manchester has said its law department will deliver lectures virtually from the start of term one.
