Success in 2025 Guardian University Guide

Published on 11 September 2024

We are pleased to report that the University of Liverpool Management School undergraduate programmes have risen across all subject areas in the 2025 Guardian University Guide.

The Guardian league tables rank institutions by subject, looking at student satisfaction, staff numbers, spending and career prospects. We are thrilled to report the following for our undergraduate programmes:

• Marketing is now ranked 2^nd, up from 7^th last year and one of several areas in the University to achieve an outstanding top five position
• Economics programmes in the top 10 (at 10th), up from 13^th last year
• Accounting and Finance programmes are 11^th, up from 12^th last year
• Our Business and Management programmes are now placed 18^th, up from 29^th last year

We caught up with Associate Dean Undergraduate Dr Sarah Louisa Phythian-Adams, who had this to say, "We are delighted that the quality of our programmes and outcomes for students are reflected in this year's rankings success."

How the league tables work

The Guardian League table provides an overall score for universities based on the following weightings:

Score element	%	Additional detail
Satisfied with teaching	10	Aggregated scores from section questions across the 2023 and 2024 surveys
Satisfied with feedback	10	Aggregated scores from section questions across the 2023 and 2024 surveys
Student – staff ratios	15	21/22 data reused
Expenditure per student	5	21/22 data reused
Entry standards	15	Based on actual entry grades, not advertised entry requirements (21/22 reused).
Value added	15	Degree classification vs entry qualifications (21/22 data used)
Careers	15	Graduate outcome survey (simple average over 2 years) – average of 20/21 and 21/22
Continuation	15	Proportion that continue after year 1. Only those who are inactive (i.e. left HE altogether) are counted negatively. (21/22 data used)
Overall	100

The methodology continues with that commenced in the Guardian 2024 rankings – i.e. encompassing the major change of the removal of the ‘overall satisfaction’ question from the 2023 NSS, which previously had a 4% weighting. As a result, the weightings for ‘satisfied with teaching’ and ‘satisfied with feedback’ were both increased from 8% to 10%. 

 

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