Oxford is the top university in the South East according to The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2022, following the same recognition in the 2021 list. The University of St Andrews has displaced Oxford and Cambridge off the top spot for the first time in the guide’s 30 year history. Oxford sits in second place nationally thanks to the determination of the university to become more socially inclusive. The 2020 intake reflected the new dynamic with 68.4% of the expanded number of admissions coming from state schools. This has had a direct impact on undergraduate opportunities and the student experience.
Elsewhere, the University of Surrey was recognised as the University of the Year for Graduate Employment. It is one of only two universities to avoid a decline in student satisfaction scores throughout the pandemic, the other being Imperial College London. This is partly due to the professional training placements of up to a year that are offered on most degrees through a network of 2,300 national and international businesses.
And the University of Sussex has won University of the Year for Student Retention award. Sussex has more than 14,000 full-time undergraduates, and in the latest figures the dropout rate is less than half the expected level, 5% against a benchmark of 10.1%.
The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2022 provides the definitive rankings for UK universities and the most comprehensive overview of higher education in Britain. It includes profiles on 132 universities, making use of the latest data published in the past two months.
After a year of closed campuses and a move to online learning, the new edition of the Good University Guide reveals most universities have seen a dramatic drop in student satisfaction and teaching quality scores in the latest National Student Survey.
A fully searchable website with 70 subject tables, full interactive tables and additional features goes online today on The Times and The Sunday Times.
Top Universities in South East
| Regional rank | University | National rank | Last year’s national rank | 2021 National student survey teaching quality (%)
| 2021 National student survey student experience (%) | Graduate prospects (% in professional jobs or graduate-level study) | Completion rate (%) |
| 1 | University of Oxford | 2 | 2 | n/a | n/a | 89.2 | 99.1 |
| 2 | University of Southampton | 16 | 15= | 75.8 | 71.8 | 76.0 | 93.2 |
| 3 | University of Surrey | 32 | 39 | 77.1 | 76.3 | 81.5 | 89.3 |
| 4 | University of Reading | 34 | 31= | 72.0 | 68.3 | 76.5 | 91.4 |
| 5 | University of Kent | 46 | 48 | 74.5 | 70.4 | 68.2 | 88.2 |
| 6 | University of Sussex | 47 | 44 | 71.6 | 67.7 | 68.2 | 92.2 |
| 7 | University of Chichester | 50 | 46= | 80.5 | 76.3 | 62.9 | 86.4 |
| 8 | Oxford Brookes University | 54 | 56 | 70.9 | 67.0 | 74.7 | 90.7 |
| 9 | University for the Creative Arts | 69 | 71 | 76.6 | 65.1 | 51.0 | 84.5 |
| 10 | University of Portsmouth | 88 | 72 | 72.8 | 66.5 | 68.2 | 83.5 |
| 11 | University of Buckingham | 89= | 108 | 79.0 | 73.4 | 87.1 | 85.0 |
| 12 | University of Hertfordshire | 96= | 99 | 74.6 | 70.2 | 69.4 | 82.0 |
| 13 | University of Winchester | 106= | 96 | 72.5 | 65.3 | 63.7 | 84.4 |
| 14 | University of Northampton | 108= | 111 | 72.2 | 64.4 | 69.3 | 79.2 |
| 15 | Solent University | 112= | 93 | 76.0 | 68.8 | 59.1 | 76.2 |
| 16 | University of Brighton | 117 | 120 | 69.1 | 59.3 | 71.6 | 82.8 |
| 17= | Buckinghamshire New University | 119= | 112= | 75.8 | 68.2 | 64.6 | 73.1 |
| 17= | Canterbury Christ Church University | 119= | 127 | 73.3 | 62.9 | 70.4 | 77.3 |
| 18 | University of Bedfordshire | 132 | 131 | 74.0 | 67.6 | 66.2 | 53.1 |
