Subject rankings
34 subjects, 26 universities, built from official government data and nothing else — no opinion polls, and no credit for being hard to get into. This page shows every measure, every weight, and exactly where the order stops being something the data can support.
What makes this different
- Standing is measured, not surveyed. Academic and professional standing count here — but through REF 2021, where UK academics formally peer-review each other's research, and through whether a professional body licenses the degree as a route into the job. Nobody is asked for an opinion.
- Entry grades count for a little, and only for one reason. A selective course assembles a stronger cohort, and who you spend three years arguing with is part of what you get. That is worth something — but it measures the intake, never what the course does with it, so it sits below every outcome measure here and at a third of the weight the Complete University Guide gives it.
- Tiers, not places. Every other table prints a number and lets you assume the gap between 17th and 18th means something. We group the strongest half-dozen for a subject together and list them alphabetically, because the order inside that group is not something the data can support.
- A missing figure is never counted as a bad one. Where a university has no data for a measure it is judged on what exists, the gap reads “not published” rather than as a low number, and a course with too little data to judge fairly is listed separately instead of being ranked badly.
What goes into the score
Each is measured against its own subject first, because £31,500 is strong for History and ordinary for Medicine. Research quality carries a confidence per subject rather than one blanket caveat: Economics is assessed by a research unit of exactly that name, while Psychology and Biological Sciences share theirs with neighbouring fields and are marked as the weaker reading they are. Professional accreditation is only scored in the 6 subjects where the profession genuinely routes through the degree — in Medicine every course is approved and in Classics none is, so there it separates nobody.
| Measure | Weight |
|---|---|
| Student satisfaction (all seven official NSS themes) | 15% |
| Research quality — REF 2021, UK academics peer-reviewing research | 18% |
| Recognised by a professional body as a route into the profession | 5% |
| Average UCAS points of the students who got in | 20% |
| Earnings five years on, against the national figure for the subject | 13% |
| In work or further study 15 months after graduating | 6% |
| Share in professional or managerial roles | 11% |
| Students who continue past first year | 12% |
Weights hashed as c912316ff4c4 into the data snapshot, so a change to them is as auditable as a change to the data.
What we leave out, and why
- Opinion polls of academics and employers
- The QS World University Rankings take 30% of their score from an academic reputation survey and 15% from an employer one — 45% of the result is what people think, and what people think lags reality by a generation. We count the same two things a different way: REF 2021 is UK academics assessing research with a published method and named panels, and professional accreditation is a body like the IET or the SRA putting its name to a degree as a route into the profession. Together they carry 15% against QS's 45%. Reputation you can check beats reputation you are asked to trust.
- Entry standards as a main ingredient
- In the Complete University Guide, entry standards carry the joint-highest weight, so a course becomes "better" by rejecting more people. We count them, because a stronger intake really does change what three years there is like — but at a fraction of that, and below every measure of what actually happened to graduates. A table led by selectivity tells you who applied, not what they got.
- Going on to a master's
- We hold the figure and deliberately do not score it. Postgraduate study is not better than a job, so rewarding it would be us asserting a value judgement the data does not support. It stays available as a filter, never as a mark.
- Spending per student, staff-to-student ratios
- Measures of what a university spends, not of what its students get. We would rather measure the outcome directly, and we can.
What the order can and cannot tell you
Nearly half of National Student Survey results are withheld for small sample sizes, and where a figure does survive it can rest on a few dozen responses. A twenty-person cohort having a good year can top a table on chance alone, so we pull every small-sample figure toward its subject average in proportion to how little data sits behind it — the reason these numbers move only when a new official release lands, never week to week.
What survives that is enough to say which group a university belongs in, and not enough to order the group. When we changed one defensible weighting choice, courses moved an average of four points — wider than most gaps between neighbours. So we publish tiers, each one ending at the widest real separation available rather than after a fixed count, and inside a tier the names are alphabetical. Open any row and it names who it is too close to call against. Nobody else shows you that, and it is the difference between a ranking you can argue with and one you have to take on trust.
An honest word about who we cover
The tiers are cut by comparing each university against all UK courses in that subject, not just the 26 we list. Those 26 are not a random sample of British higher education, so most of them land in the top half nationally — of 599 university-subject entries, 388 sit in the top two fifths of the country and 6 in the bottom fifth.
Which is why a tier is a group and not a placing. A university in the third tier here can still be ahead of most courses in the country in its subject, so printing a number against the others on this page would tell you the less useful of the two facts. Open a university instead and you get the published figures themselves.
The tables
Tier 1 — strongest for this subject
On our measures these are the strongest places in our catalogue to study this. They are listed alphabetically: the differences between them are smaller than the uncertainty in the data.
Tier 2
Strong, and separated from Tier 1 by more than the margin of error.
Tier 3
Solid, with a measurable gap to the tiers above.
Tier 4
Further back on the measures we use.
Universities inside a tier are listed alphabetically, and there is no order within a tier — the differences are smaller than the data can carry, so publishing one would be inventing it. Open any university, or several at once, for the published figures behind it: earnings, satisfaction, research and the rest, on the same rows every time so they can be read side by side.
Held back by missing data — listed, not ranked
These have too little published data to score fairly, usually because the official statistics withhold figures for a cohort too small to publish safely. That is not a verdict on the course, so here is what we do hold rather than nothing at all.
Economics — graduates earn −£4,588 against the national average for Economics, five years on. Only 38% of the measures we score are published for it.
Economics, Finance and Data Science — graduates earn +£16,482 against the national average for Economics, five years on. Only 38% of the measures we score are published for it.
Economics — graduates earn −£8,990 against the national average for Economics, five years on. Only 38% of the measures we score are published for it.
Courses we hold that are not in this table
None of these is a judgement on the course. A university marked not in this table at all is missing for one of the reasons below and for no other reason — never because it scored badly.
BSc Economics — we have not yet matched this course to its official record.
BSc Mathematics & Economics — HESA classifies this as mathematical sciences, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
BSc Statistics, Economics & Finance — HESA classifies this as mathematical sciences, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
BSc Economics & Mathematics — HESA classifies this as mathematical sciences, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
Finance BSc (Hons) — HESA classifies this as business and management, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
BSc Finance — HESA classifies this as business and management, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
MSci Finance with Innovation — HESA classifies this as business and management, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
BSc Economics and Data Science — HESA classifies this as computing, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
BSc Economics and Mathematics — HESA classifies this as mathematical sciences, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
BA Land Economy — HESA classifies this as architecture, building and planning, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
Finance BFin — we have not yet matched this course to its official record.
Finance & Statistics BSc (Hons) — HESA classifies this as mathematical sciences, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
Economics and Mathematics BSc — HESA classifies this as mathematical sciences, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
Philosophy & Economics BA — several official courses match this title and we will not guess between them.
BSc Mathematics & Economics — we have not yet matched this course to its official record.
Economics, Psychology and Philosophy (EPP) BA/BSc — HESA classifies this as psychology, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
Actuarial Science BSc — HESA classifies this as mathematical sciences, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
A university missing from every list above is not ranked last — it is not ranked. Either we do not list it, or it has no Economics course in the official data at all. An absence means "we do not know", never "it is weak".
Not published: Veterinary Science, Other — only 4 universities in our catalogue have scored courses — too few to band into tiers honestly. We would rather leave a subject out than band it on too little.
Sources: Discover Uni (on_2026_07_28_12_24_31), the Longitudinal Education Outcomes dataset, Graduate Outcomes, the National Student Survey, and REF 2021. Snapshot on_2026_07_28_12_24_31-c912316ff4c4, computed 2026-08-23. Each source publishes annually or less often, so these tables change when a release lands and not otherwise. Where our data comes from covers every figure on a course card.