A Good Place to Study?
Although Royal Holloway quotes various figures for academic achievements on its website, you need to be aware that, according to data published by Times Higher Education, Royal Holloway is on a slow-but-sure decline.
Times Higher Education (THE), formerly known as The Times Higher Education Supplement, is a respected analyst of higher education institutions and standards which, in 2011, launched its World University Rankings. The rankings, which THE publishes online, are ‘based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook’.
For the most complete calendar year to date – 2025 – TES included over 2,000 universities across 115 countries and territories. The top 200 universities are given individual rankings but, beyond that, they are aggregated into groups of 50 for the next 200 and then into groups of 100 from position 401 onwards and it must be assumed that this is because universities, like the results of a Google search, become much less relevant as they disappear down the rankings.
As the graphs below show, Royal Holloway has been sliding down the rankings for well over a decade now and it may be no coincidence that its period of greatest decline coincides with the Senior Leadership Team’s (SLT) implementation of its ‘Masterplan’.
Royal Holloway’s ‘Masterplan’ was based on a significant and rapid rise in student numbers and needed to attract more and more of them. With the Student Union’s emphasis on late night parties – even on weekdays – and special offers on cheap drink; the university’s introduction of much improved sports’ facilities; the creation of roles such as Director of Student Life and Executive Director of Student Journey, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Senior Leadership Team’s emphasis has been on attracting students through the offer of having a good time rather than academic achievement. It’s even been rumoured that, in some quarters, the university has gained the moniker ‘Royal Holiday’.
So, if you are thinking of enrolling with Royal Holloway you can be pretty certain that, if the current trend continues, its ranking will have slumped even further by the time you graduate and that you are going to need a bit more than ‘Studied at a university with a lovely building’ on your CV.