According to Times Higher Education, this means that Lancaster is ranked eighth of all higher education institutions in the UK for student satisfaction, fourth when FE colleges and small or specialist providers are excluded.

It is further evidence of the high quality of the student experience at Lancaster and follows closely on the heels of a Gold Award in the Teaching Excellence Framework, which measures teaching quality alongside employment outcomes and programme completion.

Professor Mark E Smith, the Vice-Chancellor of Lancaster University, said: 'Staff at Lancaster University put a huge amount of effort into providing a high quality learning experience for our students. They do this in partnership with our students and I would like to congratulate everyone on another very strong result for Lancaster. We take the NSS very seriously because it gives us important feedback about how to further improve the quality of our teaching. Although we are regularly amongst the top 10 for overall satisfaction that doesn't mean that we are complacent or cannot do better.'

More than 300,000 final year students at more than 500 universities and colleges took part in the annual survey, which records in detail how students feel about their learning experience.

They are asked questions about the quality of their teaching, learning opportunities, assessment and feedback, academic support, the organisation and management of their course, the quality of learning resources, whether they feel part of a learning community, whether they are listened to and the strength of the students' union.