Queen Mary, Durham, York and Exeter have just joined the Russell Group, bringing their membership up to 24 and reducing the 1994 group of research intensive smaller universities down to 13. There are various university groupings:
RUSSELL GROUP: Used to be the large urban universities that offered a full range of subjects, has now expanded to include a number of smaller campus universities. The group has managed to grab the media’s attention and sidelined the 1994 group (whose members are often higher in league tables) and this led to the defection of a number of the 1994 members: Cambridge, Oxford, LSE, Imperial, Durham, Warwick, UCL, Bristol, York, Exeter, Southampton, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Kings, Nottingham, Leeds, Cardiff, Queen Mary.
1994 GROUP: The smaller research led universities, who recently lost 4 members to the RG: St Andrews, Lancaster, Bath, Loughborough, Leicester, Sussex, Surrey, Royal Holloway, East Anglia, SOAS, Reading, Essex and Goldsmiths.
UNAFFILIATED: A mixed group of 27 traditional and new universities, who include: Kent, Aston, Strathclyde, City, Heriot-Watt, Brunel, Dundee, Aberdeen, Keele, Swansea, Stirling, Hull and Aberystwyth.
MILLION + GROUP: The bulk of the ‘new universities’ with 25 members.
UNIVERSITY ALLIANCE: A mixture of 23 former colleges or higher education and new universities but also includes Salford and Bradford.
GUILD HE: A group of 22 mainly specialist institutions (art, agriculture etc).
The Russell Group are usually described in the media as the group of ‘elite universities’ but many of the top institutions are in the 1994 group, with St Andrews having an average entry standard of 515 points, compared to Queen Mary’s 393. I assume that the majority of unaffiliated universities will gradually join one of the trade bodies that best represents their interests.
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