Birmingham City University ranks highly on social mobility league table

Birmingham City University has ranked fourth among all English universities in the 2022 English Social Mobility Index, up from 13th place last year.

The new league table highlights the University’s commitment to transforming the lives of our students, as the University for Birmingham.

The ranking, published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), evaluates the social mobility impact of different HE institutions across England and is partly based on a similar ranking used to assess institutions in the US.

The methodology behind the league table compares the contribution of higher education providers in England to social mobility by combining ‘the social distance travelled by graduates from an institution with the number of graduates so transported’.

The weightings of the Index were on ‘access’ and the ‘outcomes stages’, while this year Graduate Outcomes data was added as a component, with the access weighting increased to balance the model.

Director of HEPI Nick Hillman said: “Unlike many other league tables, there is huge diversity, as the top 10 includes two former polytechnics (BCU and Wolverhampton), three Russell Group institutions (Queen Mary University of London, Kings College London and London School of Economics) and four former Colleges of Advanced Technology (Bradford, Aston, City and Salford, and an institution that became a full university less than a decade ago (Newman). It all confirms that our higher education sector has strength in breadth.”