University of Essex - Reputation

Reputation

Essex is among the smallest multi-faculty universities in Britain and is a member of the 1994 Group. Despite its small size, Essex has developed an international reputation for teaching and research. The annual Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis and Collection, now approaching its 41st year, attracts faculty and students from all over the world as does the human rights centre celebrating its 25th year.

The university was known as a left-wing hotbed with respect to faculty and students, but today is characterized, as most UK campuses, by rather less radical student politics.

The University of Essex was rated ninth in the UK in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE, 2008) and was in the top 20 for student satisfaction, amongst mainstream English universities, following the National Student Survey (NSS, 2011).

The 2010 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to Professor Christopher Pissarides who gained his BA and MA degrees in Economics at the university in the early 1970s.

Despite a national trend, showing a drop in the number of applications to Higher Education institutions; applications to the University of Essex have increased by 46% in the last four years. Vice-Chancellor of the University of Essex, Professor Colin Riordan, said:

“This is an encouraging sign that students are recognising the value of an Essex degree.”