Employability skills are embedded in degrees, one of the factors that earned Aston a gold rating in the Teaching Excellence Framework. Assessors also admired the involvement of professional bodies and employers in course design and delivery. This pays off in a strong showing in the Graduate Outcomes survey: Aston is 35th in our analysis of the proportion of graduates in highly skilled work or further study after 15 months, a slight decline from 2021.

Based on a self-contained 60-acre site not far from the centre of Birmingham, Aston offers a campus experience within a big city. Its popularity is on the rise: a third consecutive year-on-year increase in applications brought them to a record high in the 2021 admissions cycle, up 8 per cent on the year before. New student enrolments have remained steady. 

Aston's students record rising levels of satisfaction in the latest National Student Survey. In our analysis, the university rises 12 places to rank joint 50th for satisfaction with the undergraduate experience. It is 97= for satisfaction with teaching quality.

Modern teaching facilities include a redeveloped library and an up-to-date home for the highly rated business school, the base for almost half of all Aston’s students. Extra social learning spaces have been added and a new students’ union opened at the heart of the campus in 2019. There are many pockets of greenery where students can relax: the campus is dotted with outdoor sculptures and there are geese to watch on the redesigned Chancellor’s Lake. 

The pioneer of degree apprenticeships in the UK, Aston offers 16 programmes across the IT, business, technology, transport, science and healthcare sectors. From September 2022, new programmes will cover digital marketing, business-to-business sales, research science, and leadership and management, healthcare, supply chains and engineering.

Aston doubled the number of staff taking part in its submission to the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021) compared with the previous national assessment in 2014, and 79 per cent of the team's work was assessed as world-leading or internationally excellent, the top two categories, almost the same as last time around. The university hosts research centres in enterprise, healthy ageing, Europe, and neuroscience and child development, among others.  Pharmacy, another strength at Aston, was awarded a prestigious regius professorship to celebrate the Queen’s 90th birthday in 2016. 

Aston has lost ground as one of the best-performing pre-1992 universities in our social inclusion index in recent years (72nd). It has the UK’s second-highest proportion — 85.6 per cent — of students drawn from ethnic minority backgrounds and 87.8 per cent of its students are from non-selective state schools.

A women-only gym is among facilities at the Sir Doug Ellis Woodcock Sports Centre on campus, which also include a swimming pool and sports hall with indoor courts. Six miles away, the Outdoor Recreation Centre has pitches for football, cricket and hockey.One of the country’s leading student cities, Birmingham’s bright lights are walking distance from campus. First-years are guaranteed student accommodation and while no halls of residence are catered, a termly meal deal at campus catering outlets provides sustenance to cookery-shy students.