There has been plenty of development at the main campus — most recently the modernisation of Nottingham’s first female hall of residence, dating back to 1928, which will reopen in January 2023. The 330-acre University Park is one of the most attractive campuses in the UK, winning 18 Green Flag awards for environmental quality. 

For the past five years it has shared the environmental honours with the Jubilee Campus, a former industrial site with four lakes. The Power Electronics and Machine Centre opened there in summer 2022 with ambitions to become a world-leading hub for low-carbon aerospace innovation.

Students enrolling in 2023 will find new facilities at the expended School of Veterinary Medicine and Science at the Sutton Bonington campus, 12 miles south of the city, which now has two intakes per year. There is a new mock veterinary practice facility and refurbished teaching facilities for courses in food, nutrition and dietetics. 

Applications and enrolments are running at record levels after four increases in a row. Only four British universities took more undergraduates in 2021 and there was another 3 per cent increase in applications in a snapshot of the present admissions round at the end of March 2022.

Student satisfaction is yet to recover from the slump that afflicted most universities during the pandemic. Declining scores in the latest National Student Survey, published in summer 2022, have left Nottingham outside the top 100 for satisfaction with teaching quality (107=), and only just inside it for the broader student experience (95th). Its position in our overall table, where it shares 30th place with the University of Reading, is the lowest it has occupied for many years.

Results improved in the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021) — but Nottingham has slipped two places outside the top 20 in our research quality index weighing up improvements across the sector since the previous national assessment in 2014. The university's submissions in pharmacy and health sciences, and economics showed excellence and across all subjects, 90 per cent of the work was rated world-leading or internationally excellent, the top two categories. 

The university has always been among the favourite recruiting grounds of large employers. The latest High Flyers survey places Nottingham in the top two in 2021-22, and it is in our top 20 for the proportion of new graduates landing highly skilled jobs or going on to further study within 15 months.  

Nottingham was rated gold in the Teaching Excellence Framework, with praise for high student engagement with advanced technology-enhanced learning. 

Two new degrees in computer science with cyber physical systems began this year, and a BSc in health promotion and public health is planned for 2023. Numbers on the five degree apprenticeship programmes, which include architecture, data science and electro-mechanical engineering, are expected to rise from 300 to 400 by 2023.

Nottingham was the UK’s main pioneer of overseas campuses, opening at scale in China and Malaysia, where its campuses are centres of research as well as teaching. Undergraduates are encouraged to transfer between campuses and, with thousands of international students coming to Nottingham, the university markets itself as a global institution. It was our 2019 International University of the Year.

However, the university struggles in our social inclusion index, finishing in 106th place this year. About 30 per cent of UK undergraduates qualify for bursaries worth £1,000 a year because they have annual household incomes of less than £35,000 a year, and another £1,000 is available for those who meet a range of other criteria. 

The university is involved in a number of schemes designed to widen participation in higher education and about a third of the offers it makes are below the published norm in recognition of social and/or financial disadvantage.  But almost a third of Nottingham’s students still come from independent or selective state schools and the proportion of white working-class male students, the most underrepresented group in higher education and our newest measure, is among the lowest in the country. 

First-year undergraduates are guaranteed one of the 11,200 residential places. Sports facilities are excellent at the £40 million David Ross Sports Village and Nottingham was The Sunday Times 2019 Sports University of the Year. 

The city is popular with students and the main campus offers a lively social life.