The Times and The Sunday Times | Education - University UniversityGuide

Aston University

th=

NATIONAL
RANK

75.2%

FIRSTS
2:1s

91.6%

COMPLETION
RATE

Key Stats

n/a

TEACHING
QUALITY

24th=

STUDENT
EXPERIENCE

50th

RESEARCH
QUALITY

26th

GRADUATE
PROSPECTS

Contact details

ADDRESS

Aston Triangle, Birmingham, B4 7ET View on map >

Telephone

0121 204 4444

ugenquiries@aston.ac.uk

Website

www.aston.ac.uk

Open days

October 18

University Profile

Rated by employers and increasingly loved by students, Aston has been bulldozing the last of the 1970s buildings that dated from its early days as a university, creating a landscaped centre to the campus that symbolises a new era. Just one university has enjoyed stronger growth in the demand for places over the past two years and that has been accompanied by a strong showing in the National Student Survey, where Aston again ranks in the top 25 in the UK this year. The applications boom enabled Aston to take 17% more undergraduates in 2013, almost half of them coming with ABB or better at A level. Many are attracted by a consistently good graduate employment record, which has always been the university’s main selling point. Seven out of ten students have a work placement, often abroad, and the target is 100%. Students often go on to work for their placement company once they graduate. The university specialises in science and technology, business, languages and social science. Most students follow so-called sandwich programmes, which combine academic study

with work placement. Even after considerable growth in recent years, there are still only 11,000 students, 9,200 of them undergraduates, based on a lively campus in the centre of Birmingham. With the Government’s relaxation of recruitment controls, the aim is to grow to 13,000 by 2017. By then, too, Aston expects to open a privately-funded medical school and to launch new undergraduate programmes such as applied physics. The university has been concentrating on improving the student experience and boosting research performance with the eventual aim of becoming a top 10 university. The new MyAston mobile app allows all students to access course materials and other information remotely and at a time of their own choosing. Over 70% signed up for the service in the first six months. The completion of the Aston Student Village provides 3,000 ensuite rooms on campus. They are part of a £215m programme of improvements. An impressive new library, with glazed façade, opened in 2010. The Woodcock Sport Centre, which includes a Grade II listed swimming pool, followed in 2011 and has since acquired a new sports hall with indoor courts and team sports facilities. More chemistry and chemical engineering laboratories have been provided and £16.5m spent on the European Bio Energy Research Centre. Once a college of advanced technology, Aston remains strong in engineering and the sciences, although the highly rated business school accounts for almost half of the students. A £20m extension to the business school has seen an increase in staff from 80 to over 120. There is a heavy accent on employability. New undergraduates are offered 12 online study skills modules in areas such as essay writing before the formal start of their course. Aston has also introduced a free programme of language tuition for all students, covering six languages from Arabic to Portuguese, as part of its efforts to help boost employability further. More than a quarter of first-year students are using the service. There is a wide range of joint honours programmes for those who prefer not to specialise. Almost nine out of ten Aston graduates – far more than the national average – go straight into jobs. The tuition fee for the placement year is set at £1,000, and most students are paid by their host company, earning cash to put towards their final year of studies. At the forefront of employer-led degrees, the university was awarded £1.6m to set up a Foundation Degree Centre to establish new courses and explore other ways of delivering qualifications. Aston’s degrees are rated by employers; the university consistently features in the top 20 in the “High Fliers” survey of employers’ favoured universities for graduate recruitment. The projected dropout rate has improved considerably in recent years and, at 7%, is well ahead of the national average for Aston’s subjects. The intake is diverse, with more than 40% of the undergraduates coming from working-class homes. Six out of ten undergraduates come from outside the West Midlands, around a fifth of them from outside the UK. Business and management led the way in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, with health subjects also producing good grades. New research centres have since been established in enterprise, healthy ageing, Europe and neuroscience and child development. The £6m Aston Brain Centre opened in 2011, combining research and teaching in a single unique facility. Research funding is at record levels, with the new Aston Institute for Photonics Research proving particularly successful. The 40-acre campus is a ten-minute walk from the centre of Birmingham. Residential places are guaranteed for first years and overseas students. Recent developments have helped to place Aston among the top dozen universities in the People and Planet Green League of sustainability for the past three years. It has been given “Platinum Eco Campus” status for demonstrating a lasting commitment to sustainability. The renamed Aston Students’ Union remains active, both socially and in student welfare matters.

SHOW LESS

Detailed Statistics

PERFORMANCE