This is at least what The Sunday Times has found. It obtained the title 'Sunday Times University of the Year'. But why? The city’s reputation as a lively place for students together with Manchester’s position as Britain’s biggest university also helped attract 62,000 applicants this year, the highest figure anywhere in the country. But what about its academic reputation? The answer: It has begun a campaign to hire five Nobel prize winners and embarked on a £350m programme of new buildings and refurbishments, the biggest capital spending plan in British higher education.
Although the teaching and research excellence of Cambridge mean it tops the Sunday Times league table — as it has every year since it was first published in 1998 — Manchester leads a strong tier of universities outside the traditional “ivy league” of Oxbridge and London colleges that dominate the top five places.
Research quoted in the Sunday Times University Survival Guide finds its students are the most fashion-conscious and that the city has the best reputation for overall student lifestyle (it also finds they are national leaders in sex and drug-taking, based on a 1999 survey by the Adam Smith Institute), while the city also has a lively gay scene.
.... And I always thought that universities are there to learn and not to 'party'...I'm getting old, I suppose...
The Sunday Times, Sep. 10, 06