Students have slammed Oxford’s poor nightlife, scoring the town an average of just 5/10 for “going out” as part of a survey of university cities.
Oxford came below Warwick and Manchester as a place to live, in the survey of over 40,000 British students – and below Leamington Spa and Aberystwyth as a place to go out, despite achieving an overall score of 60%.
Many students felt the low score in the “going out” category was justified. One implied Oxford’s nightlife left a lot to be desired, saying “it’s the same clubs, and they get boring.”
Another agreed, but said she felt people should put up with the city’s shortcomings. “It’s true, Oxford is a bit rubbish for going out, unless you’re thinking more of restaurants and so on, in which case it’s not so bad. But you expect that when you apply to a small town. If going out is what matters to you, then yeah, don’t come here.”
Both Pulse and RockEntz, Oxford’s main student-run entertainment companies, declined to comment on the survey’s findings.
The survey, carried out by the website accommodationforstudents.com, showed that Oxford kept up with many traditional Northern student hotspots, including Leeds and Liverpool, which were also rated as 60% and beat traditional rivals Cambridge, who scored just 56%.
A St Anne’s undergraduate said he felt Oxford’s overall place relative to other towns was fair. “It’s not as fun here as somewhere like Manchester, but at the same time, I mean, it could be worse. It’s not un-livable-in or anything.”
He added that a friend in Cambridge had found the city “boring and cramped”.
The survey gave Oxford a 7/10 rating for transport, the highest the city earned in any category. Some students, however, felt this was unjustified.
“Sometimes when I’m cycling I can’t breathe because the bus fumes are so heavy,” said one Hertford second-year. “No-one tries to co-operate with other people.”
He said he himself never used buses, as they were too expensive and he didn’t need to go far from the city centre. However, he praised transport to and from the city, saying “the Oxford Tube is amazing.”
Over 470 Oxford students responded to the survey, which the company conducts every few years. Oxford’s performance was an improvement on previous showings. In 2004 the city fell comfortably in the bottom half of the table, several places below Cambridge.
Perhaps surprisingly, respondents to the survey also rated London as a 5/10 for “going out.” Overall, the nation’s capital scored a mere 56% – on a par with Cambridge. The poor showing was due to poor marks in the “community” and “facilities” categories. The genteel Buckinghamshire town of High Wycombe received an abysmal 38%, achieving just 3/10 for “going out.”
The survey also covered students living abroad, who rated Munich as the best city overall, with 72% on average. Some apparently misunderstood the nature of the questionnaire, with “Spain” receiving an excellent score of 74% and the UK as a whole receiving an embarrassing 38%.
