Primary school headteachers have been known to tell parents of four-year-olds: “If your child comes here, they will go to a Russell Group university.” That might be an enticing marketing pitch for a school, but is the Russell Group of universities worthy of it?
What started in the early 1990s as an informal club of prominent universities – so-called because their vice-chancellors met at a hotel in central London’s Russell Square – has evolved into a category of 24 universities that attract high numbers of undergraduate applications from across the UK and around the world.
