plan 2013–19 set a target of expanding by around 50% to around 15,000 students.
It was a member of the 1994 Group. It is now a member of the Young European Research Universities Network (YERUN) and Young Universities for the Future of Europe (YUFE) alliance.
Essex has developed an international reputation for teaching and research. The annual Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis and Collection, celebrated its 50th year in 2017, more than 15,000 faculty and students from all over the world have completed courses through the Summer School over the past five decades.
The University of Essex was rated in the top 20 in the UK in the Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) and has been in the top 15 for overall student satisfaction six years running, amongst mainstream English universities, according to the National Student Survey (NSS, 2018).
Essex's alumni include two Nobel laureates, making the university one of only three non-Russell Group universities which have an alumni including a Nobel laureate, alongside the University of Greenwich and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. The 1987 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Óscar Arias, who completed his doctorate in political science in 1973. The 2010 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to Christopher Pissarides who gained his BA and MA degrees in economics in the early 1970s. In 2016 former Essex academic Oliver Hart won the Nobel Prize for Economics. Derek Walcott, who received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature, served as Professor of Poetry at the university from 2010 to 2013 before his retirement.
=== Rankings ===
Essex was rated Gold in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) in 2017. The TEF Panel noted students from all backgrounds achieved outstanding outcomes with regards to continuation and progression to highly skilled employment or further study and outstanding levels of satisfaction with teaching, academic support, and assessment and feedback. In the 2023 TEF assessment, Essex's award was revised to "Silver".
Essex has been consistently …
