Surely at some point every UK uni student has been in a lecture and felt their eyelids drooping. Sometimes this is because you were out until 4am the night before clubbing to bad Justin Bieber remixes. But sometimes this is because the lecture is just so mind-numbingly boring that you lack the willpower to stay conscious. Here’s a ranking of how boring the lecturers are at all the Russell Group unis in 2025.
The results of 2025’s National Student Survey are here. 357,174 UK uni students were asked, “How often to teaching staff make the subject engaging?” The responses of students from different Russell Group unis really varied.
Unsurprisingly, the lecturers at Oxbridge are much more interesting than average. The students at the University of Oxford found their teaching staff the most engaging. The University of Cambridge and Durham University also scored pretty well for this.
At the other end, students at Newcastle University and the University of Manchester found their students the most boring. Well, students at those unis are known from spending more time raving than revising. So maybe it matters less to them anyway what the lectures are like.
The percentage by each university is the proportion of students who had a positive response to the question “How often to teaching staff make the subject engaging?” in the National Student Survey, fyi. So, the lower the score, the duller the lectures apparently are at that uni.
So, here are all the Russell Group unis ranked by how boring students find the lecturers:
24. University of Oxford – 88.1 per cent
23. Durham University – 86.5 per cent
22. University of Cambridge – 85.4 per cent
21. University of Sheffield – 84.8 per cent
=19. University of Exeter – 83.2 per cent
At least Exeter students can give up and go to the beach if they’re bored
=19. University of Warwick – 83.2 per cent
18. University of York – 83.0 per cent
17. University of Bristol – 82.5 per cent
16. London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) – 82.1 per cent
15. University of Liverpool – 81.6 per cent
14. King’s College London (KCL) – 80.7 per cent
=12. Imperial College London – 79.8 per cent
=12. University College London (UCL) – 79.8 per cent
11. Cardiff University – 79.7 per cent
=9. University of Edinburgh – 79.1 per cent
Thank God Edi is pretty
=9. University of Southampton – 79.1 per cent
8. University of Glasgow – 79.0 per cent
7. Queen’s University Belfast – 78.7 per cent
6. University of Leeds – 78.6 per cent
5. University of Nottingham – 77.9 per cent
4. University of Birmingham – 77.6 per cent
3. Queen Mary University of London – 76.8 per cent
2. University of Manchester – 76.6 per cent
1. Newcastle University – 75.6 per cent
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