Leicester is named Daily Mail University of the Year 2025
The University of Leicester has been crowned the Daily Mail University of the Year 2025.
Judges were particularly impressed by the University’s social mobility initiatives, which include programmes for students from underrepresented backgrounds to support their progression into higher education.
Leicester also scored highly for teaching quality, student experience, research excellence, graduate outcomes and social inclusion.
The result follows a string of successes for the East Midlands university.
In the past year, Leicester received an overall Gold in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) 2023, making it one of a small number of institutions nationally to achieve TEF Gold alongside a top 30 REF performance, indicating outstanding performance in both teaching and research. In July, the University received the news it was ranked in the top 30 UK institutions of the National Student Survey, clinching 27th place according to analysis by the Times Higher Education.
The University’s Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare also caught the imagination of the Daily Mail’s judging panel. The centre’s mission is to improve patients’ lives by pioneering a robust new approach to medical education and training for junior doctors that positions empathy at the heart of healthcare. The judges also liked the Citizens of Change Scholarship, which challenges students to articulate in 60 seconds one thing they’d change in the world. Successful scholars can receive up to £15,000 over three years.
Alastair McCall, Editor, Daily Mail University Guide, said: “Leicester is a model university for the 21st century and one of the best catches in British higher education, providing an outstanding university education in return for eminently attainable A-level grades.
“This is an institution not afraid to innovate – DNA fingerprinting was discovered here by Prof Sir Alec Jeffreys 40 years ago – and the university seeks out the next generation of changemakers through its imaginative Citizens of Change scholarships, which challenge applicants to make a 60-second video about the one thing they would change in the world. Lucrative scholarships reward the best submissions.
“Putting empathy at the heart of medical education and training within its excellent medical school is just the latest example of how the university works to make the world a better place, turning out graduates able to make an impact on the world rather than simply take their place within it.
“The ethnic and social diversity on campus reflects the city in which the university is located, and the university works hard to provide its distinctive higher education to everyone who would benefit from it. There are no obvious weaknesses in our University of the Year: strong in teaching, strong in research, socially diverse and reflective of modern Britain, and with a good graduate employment record.
“Leicester was once one of the better kept secrets of British higher education. No longer. The growing number of applicants is testimony to Leicester’s ability to cut through in a competitive marketplace; the university’s dynamic graduates are evidence of the university’s ability to make a difference.”
University of Leicester President and Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Nishan Canagarajah, said: “The legacy of Leicester is that it is founded on a spirit of hope – to use the power of higher education to benefit others. To create a fairer, more equal society and to empower its community of students, staff and alumni to become Citizens of Change. It is therefore with gratitude that we accept this honour of being the University of the Year.
“As an international university in Britain’s most diverse city, we are a University for inclusion. We are a world-leading, research-intensive university that provides higher education to a particularly diverse student body. This unique position means that the education we provide at Leicester really does have the opportunity to transform lives. We remain true to our values of being inspiring, impactful and inclusive while holding fast to our founding principles with humanity and hope.”
The Daily Mail ranking, first published last year, is the broadest-based ranking of UK universities. It is made up of 12 performance indicators covering student satisfaction with teaching quality, support and their wider university experience, graduate jobs outcomes and salaries, research quality and income, degree outcomes, student progression, entry standards and – uniquely – a measure of universities’ commitment to social mobility, measured through the proportion of first-generation students registered. The ranking features 129 universities.
The guide is edited and compiled by Alastair McCall, who has been compiling and editing university guides annually since 1998, first for The Sunday Times, and now for the Daily Mail.
Leicester ranks 29th= in the new edition of the guide, a rise of three places from last year. Based on outcomes from this year’s National Student Survey (NSS), Leicester ranks 8th for student experience under a Daily Mail analysis of the results, its strongest performing area in the NSS. The university scores heavily, too, for research. Using results from the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, Leicester ranks 29th for the quality and quantity of research and 21st in the UK for research income per head of research staff. Average early career graduate salaries of £29,000 rank the university 28th=, while the 83% of students who leave with a first class or 2:1 degree places Leicester 37th=.
With just under 40% of students the first in their immediate family to go to university, the university ranks 84th= in the UK for social mobility. However, among the 28 universities ranked higher than Leicester in the table overall, just five have a better record for social mobility.