The primary aim of the rankings

London has one of the largest concentrations of universities and higher education institutions in the world. It has 40 higher education institutions and has a student population of more than 400,000.Among the institutions in London are some of the old and world-famous colleges that today make up the federal University of London, modern universities, as well as a number of smaller and often highly specialised universities and colleges. Additionally, over 45,000 students in over 180 countries follow the University of London External System, established in 1858.


GUG: Guardian University Guide 2017
TUG: Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2016
CUG: Complete University Guide 2017

AMBA: accredited by AMBA
EQUIS: accredited by EQUIS
QS: ranking in QS World University Rankings 2015/2016
THE: ranking in Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2015/2016
RG: Russell Group a self-selected association of 24 prestigious British public research universities.
GT: Golden Triangle a group of elite universities located in the southern English cities of Cambridge, London and Oxford.
ARWU: ranking in Academic Ranking of World Universities


A number of foreign university institutions operate in London without Royal Charters. Some are bona fide universities with their degrees validated by recognised accreditation bodies abroad or in the UK, while others are not validated at all or are validated by unrecognised accreditation agencies.

Many foreign universities run study-abroad programmes based in London, but these are often restricted to students who spend the majority of their degree studying at the university campus in their own country, and are not independent university campuses. Some of the colleges offering foreign degrees in London are listed below.


As part of legacy plans for the 2012 Olympic Games, an international university is to be built in London’s Olympic Park. The new university will make use of the sporting facilities and high-tech communications infrastructure remaining after the Olympics, and will specialise in sport science, digital media and green technology.

It is likely that the new institution will either become a constituent college of the University of London , or another London institution such as the University of East London, Imperial College or the University of the Arts London. In addition, Loughborough and Bristol universities have expressed interest in running the institution’s sports science programmes.

There is also a strong possibility of co-operation with a foreign university, with both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tsinghua University, Beijing being mentioned.

The institution itself will be established before the Games, although it is only expected to move to the Olympic park in about 2015. The Government is expected to provide a subsidy but it is hoped that the majority of funding will come from the private sector.

Additionally, St. Mary's University College, located in Twickenham, South-West London, was awarded full University status in January 2014


GSM London has worked in partnership with Plymouth University since 2006 to deliver undergraduate degrees, which are validated and awarded by Plymouth.

GSM London is a member of the Association of Independent Higher Education Providers and is accredited by the British Accreditation Council for Independent Further and Higher Education.

The college has no connections with the University of Greenwich, also based in Greenwich.


The primary aim of the rankings is to inform potential undergraduate applicants about UK universities based on a range of criteria, including entry standards, student satisfaction, staff/student ratio, academic services and facilities expenditure per student, research quality, proportion of Firsts and 2:1s, completion rates and student destinations. All of the league tables also rank universities on their strength in individual subjects.

Each year since 2008, Times Higher Education has compiled a "Table of Tables" to combine the results of the 3 mainstream league tables. In the 2016 table, the top 5 universities were the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University of St Andrews, Imperial College London and Durham University. The top 5 universities in a 2009 ranking of British universities by national reputation were Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, LSE and St Andrews, while in a companion international reputation ranking, the top 5 British universities were Cambridge, Oxford, UCL, Imperial and Manchester. The top five universities in a 2015 ranking of institutes that produce the country's most employable graduates in a survey of recruiters from major UK companies in the business, IT and engineering sectors were Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, Manchester and King's College London. The five universities with the highest average UCAS tariff scores for undergraduates starting in 2014-15 were Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, Durham and St Andrews.

Disparity with global rankings

in the top ten of British university league tables, such as St Andrews and LSE, "inhabit surprisingly low ranks in the worldwide tables", whilst other universities such as Manchester and KCL "that failed to do well in the domestic rankings have shone much brighter on the international stage". The considerable disparity in rankings has been attributed to the different methodology and purpose of global university rankings such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities, QS World University Rankings and Times Higher Education World University Rankings. International university rankings primarily use criteria such as academic and employer surveys, the number of citations per faculty, the proportion of international staff and students and faculty and alumni prize winners. When size is taken into account, LSE ranks second in the world out of all small to medium-sized specialist institutions and St Andrews ranks second in the world out of all small to medium-sized fully comprehensive universities using metrics from the QS Intelligence Unit in 2015. The national rankings, on the other hand, give most weighting to the undergraduate student experience, taking account of teaching quality and learning resources, together with the quality of a university's intake, employment prospects, research quality and dropout rates.

The disparity between national and international league tables has caused some institutions to offer public explanations for the difference. LSE for example states on its website that 'we remain concerned that all of the global rankings - by some way the most important for us, given our highly international orientation - suffer from inbuilt biases in favour of large multi-faculty universities with full STEM offerings, and against small, specialist, mainly non-STEM universities such as LSE.'