Sunday Times University League Table

[thing47]

Just having a look at yesterday's new league table. No real surprises in the top 20, Surrey is the big mover just outside that, up from 32 to 22, and further down the list Northumbria has moved up from 62 to inside the top 50.

Universities of the year are Bath and NTU (Modern University of the Year).

The 'Best for Teaching Quality' sub-table made me take a second look, as with the exception of St Andrews the top 10 is all non-RG, lesser-known universities. But that category is student-assessed so I don't really see how many students are in a position to compare objectively how good their teaching is to another university…

Of course league tables have to be taken with a (large) pinch of salt, but always worth a glance.

Just to reiterate, when I started this thread I did advise people to take ALL league tables with a large pinch of salt… I have no vested interest at all, I used to work in independent educational research but that was a lifetime ago so I am very out of date, now I'm just an interested spectator 😁

@grandyten I think to an extent you have answered your own question. There's no doubt that pockets of excellence exist in some unusual places and one would assume that people in that industry are aware of the fact. In which case, if your DC knows that he or she wants to go into something very specific, ie marine biology or F1 engineering they would do well going to Plymouth or Oxford Brookes respectively. But if they are uncertain about a future career, they are probably better off at a university which sits higher in the rankings.

Drilling down into the specifics of a course is undoubtedly a better option than looking at overall league tables, as @poetryandwine says. As she is involved in admissions, or used to be, she is something of an expert in these matters.

I am on record as broadly having the same reservations as @SuperSalamander has expressed regarding the relevance of Research Excellence to undergraduates. In my experience world experts in research are more interested in continuing that research than in teaching teenage undergraduates, though I accept this might not be the case everywhere. At post-grad level I would argue it's a very important factor, probably the most important, but I'm not convinced it is at under-graduate.

I agree with you that it is a myth that top class researchers are bad teachers - but they are not automatically good teachers, or very active teachers, either.

But neither are mediocre researchers necessarily or automatically good teachers either!

I'm in the humanities - we connect our teaching & research far more closely - indeed at my place, it's encouraged to run module options that are absolutely research-led. When I start a new book/project, I validate a module on that topic so my students are working on new material alongside me as much as is appropriate or possible.

And if you look at my advice to dig into a department's website, you can usually see which staff members are teaching on what modules. So you can see which specialists are teaching on their specialist topics etc etc. Or not, as I understand is much more usual in STEM subjects.

Thank you for the link, @PerpetualOptimist That is very interesting and somewhat heartening.

@BirdinaHedge , I think in some STEM subjects at least, much research is genuinely less accessible to UGs, although it is possible to give them some sense (beyond what one would say to a generally well educated person) of what it is about. Research led teaching sounds fabulous to me, but I am struggling to think how meaningfully to implement it (outside of projects and theses). Enquiry based learning, sure - although in our large School we don’t have the capacity to offer small, intensive modules until Y3.

We teach our specialisms in Y3-4. Everyone pitches in within loosely defined teaching groups when assigned to teach T1-2.

Agree @grandyten - to me it's the course that counts more than the overall university.
My daughter wants to do animation and the degree program at University of Hertfordshire is considered one of the best in the world, but no one will argue that the university has a particularly good reputation overall. I imagine a few of my friends raising their eyebrows if she went there, despite the competitiveness of the course, but they'd all be impressed if she went to UAL, despite it not being as well considered for that particular field.
I of course looked at where my university ranked (it is not in the UK). It is a specialist university and ranks at number three in the world on the QS Rankings. I would dispute that for sure as I feel I got a so so education and not one that prepared me at all for real life work in that field. (Obviously I went some time ago but it had an excellent reputation then too).
And thank you everyone for clearing up the UCAS points thing. I could never understand how the averages were so high at some unis.

Yes @poetryandwine in our 3 year degree, we have a compulsory curriculum in Y1, with 2 all cohort lecture modules, supported by weekly seminars. We teach our specialist areas in those survey modules but not our specialist research.

Which takes me back to league tables being specific to specific disciplines