University College Falmouth offers top ten student experience

University College Falmouth (UCF) has entered the Times Higher Education's Student Experience poll for the first time, hitting the table of top ten institutions in the country for offering the best teaching and learning experience.

The top ten for teaching and learning table placed UCF at an impressive number nine, with Oxford University in first place and Cambridge University in second place.

Of the 22 categories that formed part of the survey, teaching and learning criteria included high-quality staff/lectures, helpful/interested staff, well-structured courses, good personal relationship with teaching staff, tuition in small groups and fair workload, and UCF performed exceptionally well in all of them.

In addition to those all-important categories, UCF also scored highly in the following categories: good environment on campus/around university; good accommodation; and whether students would recommend the institution to a friend.

"With an overall score of 76.8%, only 8.1% below Loughborough University who rank first in the list with 84.9%, this is a positive achievement for a specialist University College in a rural location," said UCF's Pro Rector, Dr Andrew Upton. "This demonstrates UCF's unyielding commitment to placing the student experience at the heart of everything we do - from our investment in industry-standard facilities and student mentoring initiatives to our emphasis on community engagement, collaboration with the creative industries and helping students to make the most of our stunning, coastal location," Dr Upton added.

The survey was conducted by market-research company, Opinion-panel between September 2008 and June 2009, and students were asked to define and rate the aspects of university life that are key to a positive student experience, from the quality of teaching to student support, social life and institutional facilities.

For further details of the survey, visit http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/. For further information about University College Falmouth, visit www.falmouth.ac.uk, email admissions@falmouth.ac.uk or telephone Admissions on 01326 213730.

University College Falmouth is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the powers to award degrees in its own name. It has two campuses in Cornwall - at Woodlane in Falmouth and Tremough in Penryn (which it owns, and jointly manages with the University of Exeter) - and a third campus at Totnes in Devon, following its merger with Dartington College of Arts in 2008.

This merger created a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth's expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington's expertise in Choreography, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing. The Devon-based courses will relocate to a new, high-specification Performance Centre at Tremough in 2010, paving the way for a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2012/2013 that will be unique to the South West.

The College is a founding partner in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), a unique initiative to promote regional economic regeneration through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One and Convergence), the South West Regional Development Agency, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall Council.

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For further information about University College Falmouth, please contact Jilly Easterby MCIPR, Head of Public Affairs, Telephone: 01326 213792, or email: jilly.easterby@falmouth.ac.uk

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