Good University Guide 2023

University of Wolverhampton

National rank

127
th
68.8
%
Firsts / 2:1s
71.8
%
Completion rate

Key stats

54
th=
Teaching quality
76
th
Student experience
109
th
Research quality
100
th=
Graduate prospects
University of Wolverhampton

Contact details

Address

Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1LY,

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Telephone

Website

Wolverhampton’s creative course provision has gained new degrees in recent years — such as acting and theatre; dance and creative performance; and digital production arts for theatre. Multimillion-pound investment in the university’s Screen School is keeping pace with the curriculum, with the aim of boosting skills in the digital arts and media industries. New facilities range from Mac labs and edit suites to a video studio with movable partitions and a new production space. A new radio studio reflects local BBC station layouts, while Wolverhampton’s emerging newsreaders also have access to a bulletin studio. 

Also based at the Wolverhampton campus, the teaching of pharmacy has benefited from a dispensary and extended practice suite. The developments follow the university’s £45 million School of Architecture and Built Environment at the Springfield campus, which opened in 2020 and is part of a £120 million regeneration of a 12-acre derelict brewery into a supercampus for courses in the built environment. The National Brownfield Institute has also opened at Springfield, focusing on modern methods of building. 

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.

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Performance

Category Score Rank
Ranking - 127 (128)
Teaching quality 75.8 54th=
Student experience 71.2 76th
Research quality 21.6 109th
Ucas entry points 109 117th=
Graduate prospects 67.9 100th=
Firsts and 2:1s 68.8 120th
Completion rate 71.8 127th
Student-staff ratio 16.5 71st=
World ranking - 1001= (1001=)

Vital statistics

Undergraduates

Full-time

12,248

Part-time

2,581

Postgraduates

Full-time

2,213

Part-time

2,255

Applications/places 18,565/3,645
Applications/places ratio 5.1:1
Overall offer rate 90.8%

Accommodation

Places in accommodation 1,081
Accommodation costs £90 - £108
Accommodation contact www.wlv.ac.uk/university-life/accommodation

Finance

UK/EU fees £8,600 (Foundation) - £9,250
Fees (placement year) £1,200
Fees (overseas year) £1,385
Fees (international) £12,950 - £13,950
Finance website https://www.wlv.ac.uk/apply/funding-costs-fees-and-support/
Graduate salaries £24,000

Sport

Sport points/rank 180, 86th
Sport website https://www.wlv.ac.uk/university-life/wlv-sport/

Social inclusion and student mix

Social Inclusion Ranking 8
State schools (non-grammar) admissions 97.4%
Grammar school admissions 1.5%
Independent school admissions 1.1%
Ethnic minority students (all) 52%
Black achievement gap -18.1%
White working class males 4.4%
First generation students 69.5%
Low participation areas 21.2%
Working class dropout gap -4.3%
Mature 48.1%
EU students 0.7%
Other overseas students 6.4%

Student satisfaction with teaching quality

Mathematics 89.6%
Physiotherapy 87.5%
Accounting and finance 87%
Hospitality, leisure, recreation and tourism 86.4%
Law 85.5%
English 84.2%
History 84%
Archaeology and forensic science 83.1%
Business, management and marketing 83.1%
Art and design 81.6%
Drama, dance and cinematics 81.5%
Sports science 80%
Education 78.6%
Civil engineering 78.5%
Music 77%
Psychology 76.9%
Communication and media studies 76.6%
Pharmacology and pharmacy 75.8%
Building 74.9%
Architecture 74.8%
Information systems and management 71.9%
Social policy 71.2%
General engineering 70.7%
Computer science 70.5%
Criminology 69.2%
Sociology 69.2%
Subjects allied to medicine 68.6%
Social work 66.6%
Nursing 65.7%
Biological sciences 63.9%
Aeronautical and manufacturing engineering 59.8%