Guardian Uni League Table - some big jumps here!

[DewdropSnowdrop]

www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2020/sep/05/the-best-uk-universities-2021-league-table

Apologies for not being able to do a click Link. I will learn one day.

There are some big jumps and falls in the last 12 months.

What do we all think?

Thank you. Interesting. I think you’re right that oxbridge is held way above the others in the minds of Brits.

If you drill down a bit that ,make little sense. Course differ and it depends on fit.

I have certainly heard the head of English at an academic school argue that UCL has a stronger English Department. If you want to study Mathematical Economics most would agree that LSE offer a more rigorous course than Cambridge. Imperial definitely has the edge on a number of engineering degrees (EEE, Biomedical, etc), partly because they offer early specialisation and partly because some areas of research are London based. There are also plenty of subjects that Oxbridge does not offer, yet London, because it is so large, can. For example Imperial and the Royal College of Art work together to offer courses in Innovation and Design Engineering.

But I agree. MN in particular, is very Oxbridge focused. With Bristol and Durham often being considered next best.

"Value added score" surely can't be objectively measured?

Students enter with a set of A level/Btech/IB results marked to a national standard. They graduate with a degree marked by their own university, some of which give rather more firsts and 2:1s than others.

I work for one of the big jumpers in the nonsensical guardian rankings. I can tell you that the value added score is a joke (and it’s responsible for the jump). Marking at this university is unbelievably generous. Students getting firsts in 3rd year here would struggle to get a 2:i if they submitted them same thing in first year at other universities.

It’s beyond a joke to pretend that anyone would even try to calculate ‘value added’ when different universities do have markedly different standards.

The university exec are delighted but anyone with even a passing insight into higher education knows its utter nonsense. Just because you insist on giving all the students ridiculously high marks (which also increases satisfaction, especially if you make the work easier too), it doesn’t mean you’re providing a better education.

A big component of The Times rankings is reputation and the methodology for determining reputation focusses on experts identifying a small number of very top institutions in the world in their field. So a university that is very good in lots of subjects might never get a mention, but a university that is only ok in most subjects but has a few subjects where it is world class will.