Anglia Ruskin University guide: Rankings, open days, fees and accommodation
Overview
Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) is one of the largest providers of earn-while-you-learn degree apprenticeships in the country. In the past year, ARU celebrated the milestone of striking partnerships with 1,000 degree apprenticeship employers offering pathways to 29 professions. One in seven ARU students are now on apprenticeship programmes, with total enrolments heading towards 4,000. Ofsted rated provision as 'good' in February, praising the 'relentless effort' to drive up the quality of provision since a previous inspection in 2022 found apprenticeship programmes required improvement. All courses, both apprenticeships and degrees, have key work skills embedded into the curriculum. The university has a true regional presence in a part of the country remarkably underserved by higher education, recruiting two-thirds of its domestic intake from the immediate region. It has expanded recently from its longstanding bases in Cambridge and Chelmsford, establishing new sites in Peterborough and Writtle. The latter campus, on the outskirts of Chelmsford, specialises in agricultural, animal and environmental courses. Headquarters are on the main campus in Chelmsford, home to the Ashcroft International Business School (heavily endowed by Lord Ashcroft, one of the university's principal benefactors) and there is a further campus in Cambridge, opened by patron John Ruskin in 1858.
Paying the bills
A Merit scholarship, worth £1,000 off first-year tuition fees, is paid to all students who achieve at least BBB at A-level or equivalent. About one in six of the intake receives this. A smaller number of sports scholarships are offered to the most talented athletes, pitched at £1,400 per year for elite level and up to £12,500 for those at (international) podium level. Small bursaries are paid to the many, not the few, with all students from homes with an income of less than £25,000 benefiting from a £300 annual bursary, while those from homes with an income in the range of £25,001 to £42,875 get £200 annually. A digital support fund paid out £400 awards to more than 300 students in 2023-24 to help with the purchase of a laptop, and more than 200 students in extreme financial need received payments from hardship funds totalling more than £170,000. University accommodation is self-catered, except at Writtle where 382 rooms across 14 halls come catered (an evening meal, Monday to Friday, and brunch at the weekend) for the 29 weeks of term in an annual 37-week contract, costing between £4,833 and £7,037 per year. There is only private accommodation available in Peterborough, but Cambridge and Chelmsford have around 2,200 places available in university rooms. Accommodation in the Chelmsford student village costs between £6,294 and £7,361 for a contract running for 40 weeks and three nights, while Cambridge halls range from £5,298 to £12,997.
What's new?
The opening of The Lab on the ARU Peterborough campus greatly enhances provision for students in this cathedral city. The campus was opened three years ago and this £32m flagship development - opened in late 2024 - provides microbiology and tissue culture laboratories, engineering workshops, teaching spaces and a so-called Living Lab for public-engagement exhibits and events. As elsewhere in this multi-campus university, there is a strong accent on work-focused courses, with undergraduate options in Peterborough spanning biomedical sciences, business and management, cybersecurity and forensic computing, and construction management. The addition of ARU Writtle in early 2024 expanded both the range of courses (adding agriculture, horticulture, animal science and management, equine science, canine and animal therapy and conservation to the roster) and the type of campus on which to study. The 150-hectare site contains modern facilities alongside landscaped gardens and a campus farm - all a far cry from the bustle of ARU's other three campuses. In 2024-25, the university invested £1.5m in upgrading student accommodation in Cambridge, Chelmsford and Writtle. The addition of four new degree apprenticeships - for physiotherapists, occupational therapists, learning and skills teachers, and enhanced clinical practitioners for paediatric audiologists - brings the number of degree apprenticeship pathways available to more than 40. Last September, there were 3,780 students enrolled on degree apprenticeship programmes - with that number expected to rise further still.
Admissions, teaching and student support
When well over half of your students are the first in their family to go to university, about one third are mature returners to education, and one in five receive a lowered contextual offer, you need to have strong student support structures in place. To this end, all students have a personal development tutor throughout their time here; they signpost students to specialist services in the university. The work of these tutors is paired alongside student peer wellbeing mentors on all campuses. ARU's counselling and wellbeing service runs a range of workshops throughout the year and has also produced a series of mental health podcasts. Students are taught lifelong career skills as an integral part of their courses. They then get to put them into practice during work experience, placements and modules that confront them with real-life challenges and bring them face-to-face with external organisations and partners. Eligibility criteria for a contextual offer include living in a postcode among the 40% with the lowest rates of participation in higher education, receiving free school meals, having a parent in the Armed Forces or going to a school with a Progress 8 attainment score of average or below. Contextual offers are pitched at two grades lower than the standard offer for a given course or are unconditional. ARU's widening access to medicine policy reduces the required grades from AAA to ABB.