THE University of Cumbria has been ranked 35th out of 126 higher education institutions in a student-informed survey - a rise of 60 places from last year.

The WhatUni Student Choice Awards allows students to give their university an overall rating of one to five. Those results are averaged to create overall ratings for each university across ten categories of student experiences.

University of Cumbria vice chancellor Professor Julie Mennell said: "This is excellent news for the university, for a number of reasons, not least as the key difference between the WhatUni Student Choice Awards and other university rankings tables is that it's solely driven by the opinion of current students.

"Because the data used by league table compilers is always retrospective, we are delighted to see that the achievements witnessed, and improvements made over the past year, particularly around our investments in our estate, technology and infrastructure, have filtered through into these nationally compiled results.

“Our students continue to be at the heart of everything we do. We therefore work hard to ensure their experience is the best it can be, responding promptly to issues raised and constantly seeking improvement and development. In the student support category of the survey, we were ranked 25th in the sector, which is especially pleasing to see.”