Our Place

We have been ranked 14th in the UK and named the second most sustainable university in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2026. 

This recognition highlights our commitment to a greener, healthier and fairer future, embedding sustainability across our strategy, curriculum, and research. Our work on global challenges, including conservation, biodiversity, the circular economy, and green technologies, has contributed to our top sustainability rankings. 

For more information, visit The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2026. 

Our new partnership with Cornwall College Group is designed to boost education opportunities, social mobility and regional economic development. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed on 20 June 2025, with the aim of aligning education and economic priorities across the South West. The MoU sets out shared priorities including supporting young people’s aspirations, expanding access to higher education, and developing skills for the region’s future. The collaboration will focus on areas such as adult upskilling, clean growth, and research aligned to industry needs.

This partnership reflects our deep commitment to inclusive education, community impact, and building a skilled, sustainable workforce for the future, by investing in the future of our region through collaboration, innovation and opportunity.

Find out more about our community connections in Cornwall.

We are proud to have renewed our partnership with Exeter College through an updated Memorandum of Understanding, reinforcing our shared commitment to shaping a dynamic, inclusive education ecosystem across the region.
The agreement builds on two decades of collaboration and outlines key areas of focus, including joint leadership in education, community engagement and academic excellence. This renewed commitment reflects our ambition to expand opportunities, enhance skills, and support the success and wellbeing of learners, our city and the wider region.

Discover our partnerships with Further Education Colleges.

Exeter subjects across Science and Arts & Humanities have been ranked among the world’s top 100 in the latest QS World University Subject Rankings 2025, with nine placed in the top 50. Mineral and Mining Engineering ranked highest at 19th globally, followed by Environmental Sciences, our Sports-Related Subjects, Geology, Geography, Earth and Marine Sciences, Archaeology, Classics and Ancient History, and English Language and Literature all placing in the top 50.  Other subjects including Anatomy & Physiology, History, Theology, and Politics & International Studies also feature within the global top 100, reflecting our strengths across Science, Health, Economy, and Arts and Humanities. These rankings demonstrate the international impact and reputation of our research and education.

Take a look at the QS World University 2025 rankings. 

We are proud to have risen to 11th place in the Complete University Guide 2026, climbing three places and marking one of the biggest gains in the top 20. We also ranked second in terms of universities based in the South West.

The Guide assesses universities across ten key measures including student satisfaction, entry standards, research quality and graduate prospects. It also ranks individual subjects, and this year, 20 of Exeter’s disciplines were placed in the UK top ten.

This national recognition reflects the strength and dedication of our community and our commitment to delivering excellent teaching, world-class research and strong outcomes for our students.

Find out more about the 2026 rankings.

We have launched Community Exe, a free awards programme for under resourced teenage boys aged 13 to 16 in Devon and Somerset. Delivered alongside our local partners, Community Exe is designed to help participating young men use their extra curricula interests to develop new skills, create a sense of personal achievement, gain new life experiences and meet new people by completing one of four Award Pathways: sport, young leaders, music and communication, or AI and technology.

Through regular on campus Award Days, they will get the opportunity work with athletes, musicians, broadcasters, and industry experts, taking part in hands-on workshops and activities, whilst their families have the chance to complete their own programme designed to help them feel better prepared to support their young people through the remainder of their time in school.

Open to eligible students from Devon and Somerset, Community Exe demonstrates our commitment to building an exceptional education ecosystem across the South West that creates the best opportunities to flourish and delivers the lifelong skills people will benefit from.

Find out more about Community Exe.

Two of our climate specialists spoke at Glastonbury Festival 2025, engaging wider audiences in vital conversations about climate change. Leading climate experts, Professor Richard Betts MBE and Laurie Laybourn, a visiting Fellow at our Global Systems Institute, appeared across panels and radios at the festival to explore topics such as climate breakdown, geoengineering and global climate policy.

Their involvement highlights the importance of engaging wider audiences in environmental issues and reflects our commitment to tackle the climate emergency and ecological crisis.

Learn more about how our research and education specialists are working towards a green future.

Our pioneering collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT Delhi) will drive innovation in elite performance, injury prevention, and sports science. This collaboration unites our expertise in sport, exercise, and nutrition science with IIT Delhi’s strength in biomedical engineering and healthcare. Together, we are developing ground-breaking research and industry collaborations that will elevate India's sporting landscape and encourage global innovations in biomechanics, rehabilitation, and performance enhancement.

Learn more about our collaboration. 

Through our Transnational Education (TNE) partnership with Ain Shams University, Egypt, we will become the first Russell Group university to establish a large-scale teaching presence in Africa. Our flagship Exeter teaching institute will be on the new Ain Shams International Campus in New Cairo and will offer undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in priority areas based on regional industry and student demand, and that will prepare students for industry-ready employment. 

Beyond education, our partnership will foster cutting-edge research and industry engagement as well as student exchanges, and professional development for colleagues. This landmark initiative is a key step in our aim to become a 'globally networked university' by growing our global presence, fostering innovation, and delivering world-leading education and research.

Explore our TNE partnership here.

In 2024 we celebrated 20 years of our Penryn Campus, marking a transformative period of growth and innovation. With significant investment in our Cornwall facilities, as well as the launch of the new Graduate School of Environment and Sustainability, we are bolstering our position as a global leader in sustainability.

We are committed to harnessing our excellence in teaching and research to deliver a positive impact for the people of Cornwall, including through strategies such as the Civic University Agreement for Cornwall and Isles of Scilly. Looking ahead, our expertise in critical minerals, sustainable energy, ecology and conservation, environment and human health, and Cornish culture will continue driving positive change in the future.

Find out how we celebrated 20 years of Penryn Campus.

As one of the largest employers within Exeter and the South West, we recognise that travel to and from our sites has a significant impact on the surrounding area. Our Sustainable Transport Strategy sets out how we will encourage students, staff and visitors to adopt more sustainable forms of transport, reducing carbon emissions and local environmental impacts. This strategy plays a key role in our net zero and sustainability targets, to deliver meaningful change through a variety of activities include improved pedestrian and cycle access across our campuses, incentivising sustainable alternatives and public transport, reducing non-essential travel and our Flexible Working Policy.

Find out more about our Sustainable Transport Strategy.

We are committing our resources to support the region in becoming a hub for net zero, clean growth and nature recovery, leading meaningful action against the climate and ecological crisis. Our Circular Economy and Resource Management Strategy seeks to create a new economy across our campuses that is designed to eliminate waste, thereby reducing pollution, circulating products and materials at their highest value, and regenerating nature. This strategy integrates sustainable principles into every level of university life, from teaching and research to campus operations and construction. Its successful implementation will support the achievement of our sustainability targets and have a positive impact on the delivery of our operations; proving that a circular approach is achievable by all.

Find out more about our Circular Economy and Resource Management Strategy.

We are proud to have been named the UK’s top Business School, for integrating sustainability and environmental, social and governance themes into its MBA programme, for the second year in a row. We placed 10th globally and first in the UK in 2024’s Corporate Knights Better World MBA rankings, an evaluation of 174 programmes. The rankings look at the proportion of core modules that integrate sustainable development themes, with credit given to content relating to environmental, social and governance performance – including topics such as the circular economy, sustainable finance and climate change. The percentage of recent graduates now working for ‘impact organisations’ and companies that derive their revenue from sustainable activities, are also taken into account.  

Find out more about our Business School.

We are proud to have retained our position in the top 15 nationwide in the influential The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025. We are now ranked 13^th in the latest overall rankings and 3^rd in the South West. The Good University Guide 2025 is made up of a number of indicators including student satisfaction with teaching quality, wider student experience, research quality, graduate prospects and entrance qualifications held by new students. 

Find out more about the 2025 rankings

We are playing a leading role in the prosperity and success of our region, as part of our fight for a greener, healthier and fairer future for all. A pioneering new Critical Minerals Accelerating the Green Economy Centre will be based on our Penryn Campus thanks to £4.5 million of Government funding. The centre will help experts address the challenges faced in sustainably securing fresh and innovative access to critical minerals, which are crucial for the delivery of clean technologies. The centre has partnered with multiple local businesses and organisations to lead transdisciplinary work packages and will also create up to 3,000 new jobs in the region.

Find out more about the centre

Global Classrooms is a cultivation space for our educators to deliver transformative exchanges and environments via international collaborations. Ideas are interconnected through culture, research, education, and business, bringing together students, educators, and industries to use digitally inventive approaches for learning, teaching, and collaboration without borders. The work of Global Classrooms is underpinned by its guiding principles: inclusive education, racial and social justice, and sustainability. 

Find out more about our Global Classrooms

We are proud to provide a variety of scholarship schemes to sponsor talented students from around the world to join and enrich our community of learners. We are now a part of the prestigious A.S. Hornby Scholarships, which enable at least 30 practitioners in Teaching and Learning English as a Foreign Language (TESOL), from low-and middle-income countries, to study for their Masters in our School of Education. We are also participating in the Chevening Scholarships Programme, which aims to build a network of partnerships who will be future leaders in their countries, and the Sanctuary Scholarship scheme, which supports individuals seeking asylum and refuge, to study with us.

Find out more about available support and funding for international students.

We are committed to being a globally networked university, offering outstanding education and research opportunities for our communities, and creating strong partnerships to tackle the world’s biggest challenges. In September 2023 we published our Global Strategy to enable us to deliver on our strategic priorities. Global Exeter 2030 focusses on four priority areas: Global Partnerships, Global reputation, Global Recruitment and Global Opportunities.

Find out more about Global Exeter 2030.

South West college pupils are taking part in a new programme we have designed to give them specialist support as they prepare to go on to higher education. The Bridges to Higher Education scheme combines the work of Next Steps South West and the University to create a cohesive programme of activity for students and is currently run at Bridgewater and Taunton College and South Devon College. The programme starts when pupils are in Year 12 and runs throughout their A-level or IB studies. They have taken part in funded visits to the University so they can experience campus life and attend taster lectures for the subjects they are interested in studying and our current student act as mentors.

Find out more about the scheme

We are committed to building an exceptional education ecosystem across the South West that creates the best opportunities to flourish. A key example of this is our innovative approach to training teachers in rural and remote parts of the South West to help tackle the shortage of school staff. From September 2024, those training to teach primary-aged children will have taught delivery in “Hubs” in Exeter, North Devon and Somerset. This will allow trainees more choice about where to attend training, therefore reducing their travel and housing costs. It is hoped the changes will make it more accessible to train to be a teacher in rural or more remote locations and help schools fill teacher shortages.

Find out more about the scheme

We are committed to being a university that is embedded in our community, increasing opportunities for our local residents and taking a leading role in the prosperity and success of the region. In March 2024, we joined together with the universities of Plymouth and Falmouth to launch a new initiative, South West Think Tank (SWTT). The Think Tank will enable academics to work together, alongside our regional partners to develop workable policy solutions, to make life in the peninsula fairer and healthier and to safeguard the environment.

Find out more about South West Think Tank (SWTT)

A key priority outlined in Strategy 2030 is to grow our research, education and partnership activities in Cornwall. In July 2023, together with Kresen Kernow, – the Archives and Cornish Studies Service – we signed a Memorandum of Understanding which could lead us to work on joint research projects or funding bids, promoting Cornish heritage nationally and internationally, and developing employability skills for students.

Find out more

One of our key strategic priorities as part of Strategy 2030 is to develop Civic University agreements across the South West. We are proud to announce that in September 2023, together with Falmouth University, we signed a Civic University Agreement with Cornwall Council, the Council of the Isles of Scilly and the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board (ICB). We are committed to an annual programme of community engagement to ensure that the work developed and delivered under the umbrella of the Agreement provides real impact for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly’s people and communities.

Find out more about the agreement

Strategy 2030 outlines our commitment to being a university embedded in our community, increasing opportunities for our local residents and taking a leading role in the prosperity and success of the region. In October 2023 we signed a partnership agreement with Devon County Council formalising our existing links and creating the Devon Civic University Agreement. The aim of the aim of the agreement is to generate greater benefits for people and businesses in Devon, supporting the county to be a thriving, sustainable and prosperous place to live and work.

Find out more about the immediate priorities

We are committed to supporting and enhancing the culture, heritage, creative life and economy of our region. In July 2023, in partnership with UNESCO Cities of Literature, we hosted Translating Cultures, a series of public events and conference which brought together academics and creatives from across Europe. The festival was organised by our Department of Languages, Cultures and Visual Studies in partnership with Exeter City of Literature and included readings and discussions with poets and artists involved with wartime poetry in Ukraine; a stand-up comedy workshop with award-winning comedian Charlie George and sessions with the interdisciplinary team that brought international arts projects to COP26 and COP27.

Our global alumni community play an important role in our wider University community and provide invaluable support in reaching our Strategy 2030 goals. We are dedicated to engaging with them and benefiting from their expertise, networks and insights to support the delivery of our strategic vision.  In September 2023 we launched our new series of video chats - Alumni Matters. These videos provide an opportunity to discover more about members of the alumni community, including learning more about their careers, their thoughts on some of the key challenges our world is facing, and what they’re doing to create a greener, fairer, and healthier future for all.

Find out more about the series and watch the videos.

One of our strategic priorities is to further develop our St Luke’s Campus with a health and wellbeing focus, scaling up our biomedical and clinical research power. We have begun to engage with our community of colleagues, students and local residents to gain their feedback on the future long-term vision for the campus via a series of in person events and online feedback opportunities. The feedback from the engagement activity is currently being reviewed and incorporated into a proposal to be submitted to Exeter City Council for consideration as they develop the new Local Plan.

Find out more about our future vision for St Luke’s campus

We believe in embedding the University within the wider community by bringing people with shared values together. With this in mind, we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Exeter Science Centre to further our shared ambitions to make a difference in Exeter and the wider region. We will support each other’s goals and create a positive future by bridging the gap between research, industry and the public. This partnership will seek to create a tangible impact on the economic, social and cultural development of the South West, as well as providing opportunities for collaboration in education and research.

Find out more about the Memorandum of Understanding.

We are committed to ensuring that our international teaching, learning and employability opportunities will prepare our students to become active global citizens making a positive impact on the world. We believe that education has no boundaries and we are encouraging our students to think, act and participate globally. We provide our students with a range of opportunities to explore multidisciplinary, multinational and multicultural perspectives. We offer initiatives such as Future17, where students work in international teams to tackle real world challenges aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals; Global Classrooms which links classrooms across the globe; and the Higher Education Youth Talent Alliance, which sees us partner with top institutions in China.

See how we’re transforming education through global collaboration here.

We aim to be a globally networked university, offering outstanding education and research opportunities for our communities, and creating strong partnerships to tackle the world’s biggest challenges. We currently have over 30,000 students studying with us from 185 different countries, whilst around 100 nationalities are represented by our staff. In January 2023, we were ranked 39^th in the Times Higher Education (THE) league table of Most International Universities. This considers each institution’s proportion of international students and staff, its global reputation and the percentage of its research papers published with a co-author from at least one other country.

Find out more.

Researchers from our Environment and Sustainability Institute have worked in collaboration with Cornwall Council and Cormac on the Making Space for Nature project.  The project has helped to transform 34 hectares of urban green spaces across Cornwall into community and wildlife havens, increasing biodiversity in urban areas and helping to mitigate the effects of climate change.  What’s more, the project received international recognition having won the ‘Excellence in Biodiversity, Conservation and Enhancement’ category in the Landscape Institute Awards 2022.

Find out more about the project.

We are excited to be hosting the British Science Festival (BSF) in September 2023, with events located across the city and University campus, for visitors from Exeter and beyond to attend. The BSF is one of Europe’s longest-established science festivals, which travels to a different part of the UK each year. It brings science to the wider public in the form of installations, exhibitions, talks, panel discussions, performances and more. As a hub for transformative research and innovation in the region, we are home to the five most influential climate scientists in the UK, and our researchers will be on hand to showcase our pioneering work towards a more sustainable, healthy and socially just future, providing solutions to the biggest challenges of our time.

Find out more about the festival.

We understand the importance of supporting our local communities and heritage, through collaboration and shared knowledge.  In July 2022 Dr Tony Lidington from the University helped to bring traditional seaside entertainment back to Devon. Thanks to Tony the sentry boxes previously in disrepair standing guard outside Teignmouth Grand Pier have now both been restored, with one now transformed into a “peepbox” showing old and new images of the town.

Find out more.

Shortly after the launch of Strategy 2030 we signed our first Civic University agreement in October 2021. The Exeter Civic University Agreement (signed jointly by Exeter City Council, the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust, Exeter College and the University) establishes how we will work with city partners to deliver shared goals on community priorities including things like sustainable and inclusive growth and health and wellbeing. The Exeter Civic University Agreement is the first to be signed in the region but we are also working with partners across Devon and Cornwall to sign agreements with both counties.

Watch the video to find out more