The university has headquarters in its home city and an expanding regional footprint. At the Telford campus, a £5 million health and social care training centre opened in May 2021, providing hands-on learning facilities for key workers. In Hereford, Wolverhampton’s Midlands Centre for Cybersecurity occupies a 2,000 sq m site. The joint venture with Herefordshire council provides research and development resources out of three cyber-laboratories. 

The university also has a site in Walsall, where the high-quality sports facilities include grass and 3G pitches, outdoor courts for tennis and netball, a gym and strength facility and a 200m running track. Sports scholarships of up to £4,500 over three years come with access to physiotherapy, strength and conditioning training and mentoring.

The skills-boosting equipment may further cement Wolverhampton’s improved graduate prospects, which having entered the top 100 last year at joint 99th remain just inside it again. When the Graduate Outcomes survey took its latest census almost 68 per cent of Wolverhampton graduates were in high-skilled employment or postgraduate study 15 months after leaving university. 

Wolverhampton has embraced degree apprenticeships and has more than 1,000 students on programmes spanning a wide range of subject areas – with more to come within healthcare and other fields in 2023.  

Wolverhampton was awarded silver in the Teaching Excellence Framework in 2018, upgraded from bronze. The university still missed its benchmarks for student satisfaction and progression to high-skilled employment, but the panel praised the commitment to enhancing students’ learning experience, as well as the involvement of employers in the development and review of courses. It was also impressed by Wolverhampton’s mental health provision and support systems. 

Student satisfaction with teaching quality and with the wider experience have shot back up our rankings this year, having tumbled in the pandemic. In our analysis of the latest National Student Survey outcomes Wolverhampton ranks joint 54th for teaching quality (up 24 places), while the university gains 16 places for students’ evaluation of the wider undergraduate experience.     

Wolverhampton ranks in the top ten of the English Social Mobility Index 2022 (compiled by the Higher Education Policy Institute), which looks at how effective different universities are at delivering social mobility and is compiled by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) think tank. The university performs equally well in our social inclusion index, where it rises seven places this year to rank eighth. Almost all students (97.4 per cent) are recruited from nonselective state schools and more than two in ten come from underrepresented areas. Only one university in England and Wales succeeds in attracting a greater proportion of “first generation” entrants (almost seven in ten) – who are their first in their immediate family to go to university – than Wolverhampton. 

A new Department for Work and Pensions pilot scheme to ease the transition from university to the workplace for disabled students is underway at Wolverhampton and Manchester Metropolitan universities. Under the initiative disabled students are given a “passport” that reduces the need for repeated health assessments when starting a new job.

Poor completion rates – often a by-product of a diverse intake – hold Wolverhampton back in our academic ranking. Almost two in 10 students are projected to drop out – higher the benchmark rate of 14.9 per cent, based on the social and academic backgrounds of Wolverhampton students. 

The majority of students are eligible for some form of financial help, such as the student bursary for first time, full-time undergraduates that makes cash awards for each year that students progress to the next level – of £200 in year one and £100 thereafter. A new initiative, the bursary may help with continuation rates in future. Access bursaries for care leavers, the deaf or those with hearing loss, and estranged students are worth £1,000 in each of years one and two. There are also scholarships that reward academic merit. 

More than half of Wolverhampton’s research submitted to the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) was judged as internationally excellent (3*) or world-leading (4*). The university entered 75 per cent more staff than in the previous REF 2014 and included four new subject areas. But within the context of bigger improvements made elsewhere Wolverhampton lurches 27 places down our research quality index. 

Accommodation prices are among the UK’s most pocket-friendly, with £108 per week the top whack. Allocation is on a first come, first served basis and students can make requests such as single-sex or quiet corridors, or to be housed with fellow first-years.