The Russell Group is an association of 24 leading UK research universities with academic excellence. The Russell Group website describes the network as follows:
"The Russell Group represents 24 leading UK universities committed to maintaining the best of research, excellent teaching and research experience and unmatched connections to business and the public sector "
As of 2017, Russell group members received over 75% of all research grants and contract revenue from universities in the UK. Your graduates represent 61% of all jobs in the UK and over 17% of all UK university graduates come from your ranks alone. Russell group members award 60% of all UK doctorates. As part of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, 68% of the world's leading research was conducted at Russell Group universities. Of the 21 universities in the Russell Group that have been awarded the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF), 10 gold awards (48%), 10 silver awards (48%), and one bronze award (5%) were awarded.
It was founded in 1994 in order to jointly represent the interests of research-intensive universities vis-à-vis the government and government organizations. 18 of its 24 members are in the top 20 of British Universities by research grants, and 2004/2005 accounted for 65% of the research funding by the English Hochschulfinanzierungsrat (HEFCE) on the local Russell universities. The Russell Group is often compared to the Ivy League , the group of elite universities in the United States.
The name is derived from the fact that the group's first informal meeting took place at the Russell Hotel in London .
The group advocated tuition fees from the start and negotiated the possibility of variable, additional fees following the controversial new higher education law in 2004. In response, the students from the 19 universities set up their own parallel organization, the so-called Aldwych group.
In August 2012 the Universities of Queen Mary (London), Durham, Exeter and York were accepted as new members.
