UCL - University of the year?!?

UCL named University of the Year for 2004

University College London, our University of the Year, is an intellectual powerhouse with a world-class reputation, writes Alastair McCall

A symbol of academic excellence throughout the world, University College London is the 2004 Sunday Times University of the Year.

Ranked fifth in our league table, it is the leading multi-faculty alternative to Cambridge and Oxford. It offers a very different university experience to the only two English universities with a longer history, less of the Pimms and punts and more a steely mix of the pioneering and the pragmatic.

UCL has never finished lower than eighth in our league table and this year comes within a whisker of being ranked fourth, the first time the top four have been seriously at risk of being disturbed.

Our award, however, does more than recognise one-off performance in the Sunday Times league table. It is a reflection of the sustained academic excellence offered by UCL, an institution at once frighteningly strong in biomedical science with a clutch of leading London hospitals within its purlieu, but also home to creative gems such as the Slade school of fine art and the Bartlett, UCL’s faculty of the built environment that takes in architecture and urban planning. UCL also has arguably the finest economics department in the UK and one of just two nationally to earn the highest 5* research rating in successive assessments in 1996 and 2001.

UCL is one of the intellectual powerhouses of British higher education, able to compete with the best nationally and internationally. A recent survey which ranked the world’s leading universities based on academic citations, Nobel prize and Fields medal winners among staff and alumni, and performance relative to size, placed UCL 25th (see Table: World Ranking).

It is a truly multi-disciplinary organisation. Professor Malcolm Grant, the provost and president of UCL, believes this is at the heart of its strength. Not for him the niche specialities favoured by some institutions. He wants academics to break out from their traditional subject areas and make use of the university’s strength in related disciplines.

“There is so much knowledge in universities brigaded into Victorian silos,” says Grant. “You have to have scholars who have the ability to be masters of their own field but are intellectually flexible enough to understand other disciplines.”

To this end, the college is to group research into seven centres or institutes: the environment, genetics and society, bioinformatics, intercultural studies, health and wellbeing, enterprise and the management of innovation and human communication.

Grant, a 56-year-old lawyer who specialises in environmental law, believes UCL has a “social responsibility” to conduct research relevant to current human problems.

“If the leader has a role, it is to ensure that we bring together the different disciplines towards objectives that are of basic value to humankind,” he says. “It is not sufficient that we have a responsibility on the teaching front; there has to be a correlating one in research.”

The quality of research at UCL underpins a teaching record few can rival. No less than 31 subjects have been rated excellent for teaching in the past decade. They range from the unusual such as Dutch and Scandinavian studies to the ubiquitous, English, law and politics, to the unique such as economics within the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, one of the world’s leading schools for the study of this region.

Competition to study here is fierce, with more than seven applicants chasing every place, but it is the most accessible university in our top 10. The 383 A- and AS-level points garnered on average by last year’s entrants is high (three As at A-level is the equivalent to 360pts) but lower than its immediate competitors. Students can even get a place through clearing; one in 11 came in via this route in 2003.

UCL is one of a dwindling band of universities that still interviews all those likely to be offered a place. It helps it to sift through often uniformly strong applications on paper.

With seven other institutions it has developed and is introducing the Laws National Admissions Tests from this year in an attempt to identify the very strongest applicants for the 150 places on its law courses.

The care taken over admissions is followed through when students begin their courses. Only once in 10 years of teaching assessments did UCL record anything but a perfect score for student support and guidance, one of the six measures that inform each subject review.This helps to translate into a remarkably low dropout rate. Despite the extra attendant costs of studying in the capital, UCL loses just 1% of its students before they complete their courses. The rate expected by the funding council taking account of the social and subject mix is seven times greater.

Grant is modest about the university’s part in this success. “Our students are pretty sturdy, independent and socially aware; they are able to stand on their own two feet. Dropout rates tend to be lower in research- intensive institutions, but, of course, our staff are very conscientious and keep an eye on the students, too.”

UCL is the biggest college within the University of London federation. Founded in 1826, it was the first to admit students regardless of religion and the first to admit women on the same terms as men. This distinctive, liberal tradition remains in evidence, although the university’s figures for social diversity show many more students drawn from independent schools (40%-plus) than expected by the funding council, and shortfalls in recruitment from the working classes and deprived areas.

Grant is adamant that any change to this pattern will not come about by social or political gerrymandering. He points to UCL’s excellent record for recruitment from ethnic groups, who currently account for about one-third of the intake once overseas students are taken into account.

“We have the same problem everyone else does,” he says. “But we are not willing to bend our academic entry standards other than at the margins. There remains a strong correlation between A-level and degree performance.”

To ensure UCL remains in the vanguard of academic endeavour long into the 21st century, it is about to launch a £300m fundraising campaign, Advancing London’s Global University. This aims to make UCL the leading centre in Europe for biomedical research.The sheer scale of UCL’s medical presence in the capital is hard to take in. The medical school spans four hospitals: University College, the Middlesex, the Royal Free and the Whittington. In addition, the Institute of Child Health is based at Great Ormond Street Hospital; the Institute of Ophthalmology is based at Moorfields eye hospital, and the Institute of Neurology at the national hospital for neurology and neurosurgery.

The new campaign will raise funds for new institutes for the ear, women’s health, and cancer sciences. Plans are also ready for a new museum, the Panopticon, to house the university’s extensive art collection and the Petrie museum of Egyptian archeology.

Four other universities are shortlisted for our University of the Year award. One of them, the University of Dundee is named Sunday Times Scottish University of the Year today after a string of excellent teaching assessments helped push it into the top 30 of our league table for the first time. Dundee has maintained steady progress through our rankings since 1998 when it was ranked 48. It has never dropped a place in our table, a feat matched only by Cambridge and Oxford, ranked first and second throughout.

Our award recognises sustained excellence in an institution that does not believe in doing things by halves. Dundee is not just educating students in the most advanced way it can, it is at the forefront of fighting two scourges of contemporary life: cancer and diabetes.

Dundee has an impressive pedigree in medical and life science research. It also boasts one of the top three art schools in the UK, a huge output of professionals, substantial investment in its infrastructure and high-quality teaching. Its graduates are also the highest paid north of Oxford and ninth overall in the UK, earning £18,884 compared to an average of £16,393.

Its roll call of distinguished academics includes two of the three most cited scientists in the UK, cancer expert, Sir David Lane and diabetes guru Sir Philip Cohen, along with Sir Alfred Cuschieri who pioneered keyhole surgery.

Durham, the biggest riser in the top 20 this year, is also shortlisted. More than two-thirds of its teaching assessments have recorded excellent scores. Although it is one of Britain’s oldest universities, it has moved with the times, developing a more vocationally-oriented campus in Stockton which has helped the university diversify its intake.

The University of Manchester also makes our shortlist. It has reached its highest-ever rank (13 =) this year. Kingston University completes the nominations. A vocational university with a fine teaching record, it produces some of the best-paid graduates in the UK.