Essential facts and figures: earning potential; living at home; staff/student ratios; ethnic minorities; spending on facilities; and disabled students.

In the age of top-up fees, choosing the right degree course is more important than ever. Courses that are perceived to offer a clear career path are seeing a significant rise in applications, while some traditional academic subjects are struggling.

The rewards of a degree are extremely variable. The lifetime earnings premium for medical graduates is more than £340,000, compared with just £35,000 for those with an arts degree.

This, coupled with the growing expectations that the £3,145 cap on tuition fees will be lifted after a review, due next year, means that a degree by itself will no longer be a guarantee of much greater wealth and career success.

Applications are rising again, two years after the introduction of top-up fees and the indications are that competition for places on popular courses will be more intense next year. There will be a place somewhere in higher education for most of those hoping to start a course next year but such are the uncertainties that candidates would be wise to consider a wide range of options.

The Times Good University Guide 2009, published by HarperCollins, offers a wealth of essential information to help candidates to do just this, as well as advice on student life.

It is the most authoritative guide to universities in the UK and is an essential and comprehensive tool for students and parents.

The online version of the guide allows students and parents to create their own individual university rankings and to compare the strengths and weaknesses of different institutions by sorting universities according to one of eight criteria - from student satisfaction to research quality and degree results.

Oxford remains at the top of The Times Good University Guide league table for the seventh consecutive year and has stretched its lead over its closest rival Cambridge. But Cambridge tops 37 of the guide's 61 subject tables. Cambridge has the better record on research, entry standards and graduate destinations. But Oxford's grip on the top spot is helped by higher spending on student facilities, staffing levels and a larger proportion of students awarded at least a 2:1 degree.

The biggest movers in the latest tables include York (up from 16 to 9), Leicester (from 21 to 14) and Lancaster (from 27 to 19). Also up are Gloucestershire (from 74 to 58) and Portsmouth (from 79 to 61). Going down are Aston (15 to 28) and Bolton (93 to 111). St Andrews (5) remains the top university in Scotland, Cardiff (29) is easily the leader in Wales.

Among the generation of new universities, Robert Gordon, in Aberdeen, is the best placed at 54. Oxford Brookes is the top new university in England, one place lower. Only Lampeter (70) and Salford (83) finish below any of the post-1992 universities, making the divide between the new and old universities more pronounced than at any time since the early years of the guide.

New names in the table are Buckinghamshire New University (108), plus West of Scotland (a merger between Paisley University and Bell College - 103) and Birmingham City University (previously the University of Central England - 71).

Swansea Metropolitan (the other new university created since last year), Liverpool Hope and London Metropolitan are not in the tables because they instructed the Higher Education Statistics Agency not to release their data.

The biggest development in the new guide is in the 61 subject tables, which for the first time incorporate results from the National Student Survey (NSS). Cambridge was the only English university not to reach the 50 per cent response rate required to publish a national survey score. Like the seven Scottish universities not covered by the survey, its score was generated from its performance on the other measures.

This year there is a change in the main table to entry standards, which are based just on A and AS levels or Highers and Advanced Highers. Previously entry stagdards included a wider range of qualifications, some vocational, included in the tariff laid down by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. This change is for one year only. The other change is a new method of calculating student satisfaction scores, which shows the percentage satisfied with all aspects of their course in the national survey.

The table does not include some well-known names in higher education, either because they are specialist institutions (such as the Royal College of Art), they do not cater for full-time students (like the Open University and Birkbeck College) or they are overwhelmingly postgraduate (like Cranfield University and the London Business School). Buckingham, the only private university, is omitted because of a lack of data.

Choosing the right course and university is one thing, but an equally big challenge is navigating the maze of student finance. In England and Northern Ireland the maximum tuition fee for 2008-09 will rise in line with inflation to £3,145. Only two universities, Leeds Metropolitan (£2,000) and Greenwich (£2,835), charge less than the maximum.

In Scotland, the fee is £1,775 (£2,825 for medical students), but only students coming to study in Scotland from other UK countries pay it. Scottish students, whose home is in Scotland and who are studying at a Scottish university can apply to the Student Awards Agency for Scotland to have their fees paid. Scottish students no longer have to contribute to a graduate endowment to cover this cost.

In Wales universities can charge variable fees of up to £3,145. But students who normally live in Wales and choose to study there may be eligible for a tuition fee grant of up to £1,890.

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