Students react as University of Cumbria places in bottom 10 nationally

The university, which is split into various campuses across the county, was rated 123rd out of 130 according to the Complete University Guide’s ranking for 2025, having moved down one place from the previous year.

While each campus is separated by general subject categories – there being two in Carlisle for arts/media and medical/science respectively – it’s a ranking based on the whole university, encompassing each campus.

The ranking is judged based on various criteria such as student satisfaction, entry standards, research quality, and graduate prospects.

As expected, Cambridge and Oxford are first and second respectively, followed by the London School of Economics and Politics, St Andrews, and Imperial College London to form the rest of the top five.

The bottom ten are, from 120th to 130th, Northampton; Bishop Grosseteste; Anglia Ruskin; Cumbria; Birmingham Newman; East London; Buckingham; London Metropolitan, West of Scotland; Bedfordshire, and Wrexham.

Students at the university's Brampton Road campus in Carlisle spoke to the Cumberland News about their experiences, which ranged from the positives of attending a smaller institution, to the challenges presented by a post-pandemic educational landscape.

Ophelia, a photography student, said rankings aren’t important, and she didn’t look at them before she applied.

Instead, she said she looked into what did appeal to her - a small city with lots of access to nature.

Ophelia, a Photography student at the University of Cumbria (Image: Ollie Rawlinson)

“I came to Cumbria, and my mental health is now the best it’s ever been so I perform really well academically," she said.

“There are some courses which are better than others. I, for one, highly rate the photography course because I think our camera technician is the best person ever, really.

“The facilities are really good, and I have had a lot of one-on-one support, which is a benefit of going to a small uni.

“There's a really close-knit community in it being quite small as well. That's not just something at uni, that's the whole of Cumbria, so I feel supported.”

Jess, a final year zoology student, was conflicted on how to judge the ranking.

“I think it's a bit hard to decide. I started towards the end of Covid, so it wasn't a natural uni experience," she said. “It's a middle ground, I'd say. I don't think it's necessarily good, but I don't think it's necessarily bad either.”

On the teaching quality, she said it has been ‘good in the grand scheme of things’.

“It helps when the lecturers are passionate about what they’re teaching, but it depends on your learning style, and their teaching style."

Samantha Farr, a third-year fine art student, said some aspects of the university are good, such as catering, accommodation, and technical staff, but questioned the approach to student welfare.

Samantha Farr, Fine Art student at the University of Cumbria (Image: Ollie Rawlinson)

“I think the university is trying to be better, but there are parts that need more improvement that are not getting seen to, especially to do with the welfare of students," she said.

JD, a third-year illustration student, added: "When you do need to ask for support, they're quick to jump on it. Like, ‘Oh, yeah, if you need anything, let us know. We can try and provide what we can’.

“And then you do approach them and they're like, ‘Oh, I'll send you this person’, and you don't really get much correspondence.

“You get pushed in different directions, but you don't get to the root of what you were wanting.”

Kingsley Amize, a final year social work student, said the ranking was ‘somewhat fair’.

“My experience and the experiences of a few other people, especially in terms of accommodation, quite a few people have complained about it.

“Hopefully it does improve, but I think the score is somewhat right. I think they need to go back and just restructure everything.”

Mo, a final year physiology student, said he moved from a busy part of Yorkshire. “I came up here because it's very small," he said.

“It’s in a really nice location, quite close to the Lakes, so there’s a lot that’s appealing about this area.

“I did an interview with one of the lecturers as part of getting into this course, and he was just telling me that the main selling point of this university and the reason why they get the number of students that they do is because they’re a small university.

“You get one-to-ones with personal tutors, and where I've studied before I didn't have that.”

He added, though, that there are lacking sports facilities at the university, which he would like to see.

A spokesperson from the University of Cumbria said that it’s working with employers and industry leaders to ‘deliver higher-level skills’ to meet sectoral demands via its ‘Towards 2030 Corporate Strategy’, which also aims to equip graduates with ‘professional skills to enable them to support our communities, environment, and economy now and for generations to come’.

With this, the university has co-created a new plan focusing on ‘delivering excellent outcomes’ for all students ‘wherever and however they learn’, which ‘sets out a bold vision for the future of education at the University of Cumbria’, and joins more plans it has for the county and wider Borderlands region, such as the new Citadel campus in Carlisle, a new campus in Barrow, and a new medical school, the spokesperson said.

They added that there are external factors affecting all universities in the current economic climate which impact students’ learning, and further emphasised their ‘commitment’ to helping students ‘succeed throughout their individual learning journeys’.

“This is one of a set of league tables which attempts to measure and rank the performance of universities across a range of their activities, and across a whole variety of different styles and types of institutions," a spokesperson added.

“While we are disappointed that our overall position has fallen from last year, this is not unexpected as the data used by league table compilers is always applied retrospectively, therefore we can anticipate that improvements and achievements made over the past few years will in time filter through into these nationally compiled results.

“We are amongst the best in the UK for graduate employment and one of the top universities in the North West, with 92 per cent of our students getting a job or going on to further study within 15 months of graduating (HESA 2023).

“We are also proud to have been recognised as a silver-rated university in the Office for Students’ Teaching Excellence Framework 2023 (TEF) rankings for the quality of our teaching and student outcomes."