King’s College London has defied downwards trends to climb to 8th in the world for clinical, pre-clinical and health subjects in the Times Higher Education World University rankings.
Despite a general decline in the performance of UK and US universities, King’s was able to enter the top 10 for the first time in its history.
Speaking to Times Higher Education, Vice Principal for Health Sir Robert Lechler attributed  the success to “a steady improvement in our performance in biomedicine†and opportunities to “work in partnership†with other institutions within the University of London.
KCLSU Vice President for Health Sophia Koumi described the news as “an amazing achievement and credit to the fantastic collaboration and partnership initiatives within the health schools.
But there is still a lot to do when within the health schools when it comes to overall student experience. King’s must not forget that if they want to be a ‘world class institution’ students must  be at the heart of everything they do.â€
Other UK institutions that made it to the top 10 include the University of Oxford, which topped the list for the fifth time running, alongside UCL, Imperial and Cambridge.
The subject rankings are determined using the same criteria as the general World University Rankings, although weighted slightly differently.
For clinical, pre-clinical and health subjects research quality makes up a larger percentage of the ranking. This could account for why King’s has performed so well despite scoring low for student satisfaction in the 2015 National Student Survey for several health subjects, including medicine.
The health schools have not been without their fair share of controversies. News of 120 academic job cuts across the health schools back in 2014 were met with heavy opposition from students and staff. Pressure from the campaign resulted in senior management reducing the job cuts to 57.
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