Guardian university rankings out yesterday

[TheJollyCoralEagle]

The Guardian University rankings were published yesterday (The Daily Mail rankings are out today as well, but I don't really want to reference that otherwise this might take a political detour which isn't relevant to the conversation)
The usual subjects are at the top. Oxbridge, Imperial, UCL, Durham etc. What is interesting is further down. Established, high ranking globally, Russell Group unis like Newcastle and Nottingham at 62nd and 63rd, but Chichester at 26th and Bolton at 32nd
And then the variation between the league tables. Bolton for example is 108th in the CUG and Chichester at 79th.
I know the Guardian uses different metrics to CUG (and the others) but the rankings must have some relevance to each other?
Some good advice is to go look at the subject league tables but even there, that isn't always useful. My son wants to do Quantity Surveying. Speaking to Quantity Surveyors in practice they generally regard Oxford Brookes as one of the top universities for Quantity Surveying yet Oxford Brookes comes in at 12th on the CUG Quantity Surveying rankings. And for Magic Circle law recruitment or investment banking for example, apparently the vast majority of their recruits come from a handful of targeted top universities, but some other universities feature highly in these relevant subject rankings.
I know rankings aren't important for everyone. Some people just want to go to a university that they like for the experience, the city, their friends are going there, it's close to home etc, but for students concerned about getting a job and having to choose between more than 100 universities it's a bit of a minefield!
I know recruiters aren't supposed to look at which university you went to, so maybe rankings aren't such a big factor in the job market any more, but let's not kid ourselves if rankings/reputation/kudos weren't important most students would be going to Leeds Beckett, Northumbria, LJU or Nottingham Trent to have a great social life!

https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2024/sep/07/the-guardian-university-guide-2025-the-rankings?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/sep/07/methodology-behind-the-2025-guardian-university-guide

Noting also that there are a number of data availability issues.

I think @ErrolTheDragon's point sums things up nicely Read the guardian listings for amusement more than for information

What a load of bollocks. I think it’s appalling they can have a lower table of shame. How disheartening for those students.

Yes, and in a side bar in the printed edition it said - "look at places like Solent and Leeds Trinity if you want to do law".

Realistically, even though these institutions are clearly doing an excellent job, there's no way it's better to have a Law degree with either of them rather than Durham, Manchester, Sheffield etc.

My daughter's prospective university, Aberystwyth, has dropped twenty places despite the fact that their scores on the most important individual metrics - teaching quality and student outcomes - have improved since last year. Yet their overall score has dropped.

It makes perfect sense when one of the key criteria for this league table is “value added”. If you take students with CCC and then lots of them get Firsts, you’ll do well in this particular league table.

This is another thing that is odd.

There seems to be a danger that being generous at handing out firsts gets you rewarded, the incentives there are obvious!

I actually think the table is very misleading. I did an awful lot of research on to which course was best for my DD. If someone relied on the Guardian table they could end up on a really crappy course. DD actually walked out of one open day when she realised how weak the course was, yet the Guardian suggests otherwise.

There seems to be a danger that being generous at handing out firsts gets you rewarded, the incentives there are obvious!

All the league tables include this as a metric. The Guardian though is the only one that also takes into account the student's starting point.

DD is looking at Unis for next year. She has some reasonable GCSE's but I do worry about A level pressure.

Nearly every Uni we've looked at seems to want AAB upwards or else it is lesser known ones with quite a drop to BCC.

Surely the degree quality/ranking can't be comparable?

As soon as the traditionally low-offer Unis start creeping up to the top 30 in subjects they'll get more applicants and have to hike their offers?

CUG overall ranking for Aber looks a bit different.

Same here - with one of the really rock bottom post-92 unis; but the quality of teaching from our staff in my vocational healthcare subject was fucking superb, as was the quality of support received.

I now take students from the two most local universities - one is in the top 25, the other is almost rock bottom - and it's generally the students from the "bottom" university who are better trainee clinicians and who've fitted in better when they've come to work for us.

as does the CUG overall ranking for Chichester, Bolton etc. Not just a bit different.

and likewise Newcastle and Nottingham (and Queens Belfast) rank considerably higher, although Nottingham shows a gradual downward drift since the first table

CUG law positions for Durham and Solent.

Yes, they seem to like it a bit better.

DD seems excited about going which is the main thing!

In Clearing this year a lot of unis dropped their offers by miles.

It makes perfect sense when one of the key criteria for this league table is “value added”. If you take students with CCC and then lots of them get Firsts, you’ll do well in this particular league table

The problem with 'value added' is that it only works if all the universities follow the same curriculum with the same exams/assessments, and the same grade boundaries etc., like with GCSEs and A levels (approximately, with oversight and calibration).

There is that famous talk by Malcolm Gladwell about 'why you shouldn't go to Harvard'. In this context, the important information from that talk is (paraphrasing) that supposing a third will get a good grade and a third will drop out, and those that would drop out of Harvard would be the ones getting the good grades at a less well-ranked university. That undermines any ranking of universities by 'value added'. Plus universities award their own degrees in isolation.

When we were looking my DD did a table of criteria. One of those was league table rankings - the average of Times, Guardian, CUG, for overall uni and subject. But it was just one factor. Course modules was another. Possible year in industry/study abroad another. Distance from home, cost of accommodation etc etc. She put them in order of what was important to her, and did actually discover that 'brand name' was quite high up her list. She then came up with a shortlist to go visit. She already had her grades which made this easier. Several were discounted on open days no matter how good they seemed on paper.

What did you use for your research? I'm trying to research for my DC but I'm lost as to where to start!

My DC1 was highly technical. He wouldn't consider universities by the sea or on campuses - that reduced his list dramatically. I decided not to worry about the rigour behind as it still left lots of good options and being in a place you will be happy is important.

Interesting responses!
What is also interesting, coming at this from a different angle, quite a few people (including myself) are sceptical about the Guardian rankings, despite the Guardian officially being one of the most respected UK media outlets for the quality of it's reporting
And yet the Daily Mail which is much more sensationalist (and which some people wouldn't touch with a barge pole) has some really useful metrics in it's methodology (it's rankings this year seem to have ironed out the errors from the first rankings they published last year)
The Daily Mail rankings are also closer to the CUG rankings - Newcastle, Nottingham being in the top third of the table and Chichester/Bolton in the bottom third.
All very interesting like I said , if maybe not as useful as intended to be!

Excellent point and another reason to ignore league tables.

The DM gave top spot to Leicester who have made terrible decisions recently including redundancies which mean the teaching staff are likely to be much more focused on getting the hell out than planning how to make degrees better for incoming students.

A-level students would do well to go to lots of open days and talk to the people who'll be actually teaching them. And ask senior management what they think the future of the degree/ department is (so they don't risk being a cohort that is 'taught out" on a withdrawn degree).

The Graun table does seem to have got more divergent over time. Comparing the 2014 CUG and Graun overall placements 47% of unis - so not far off half - were ranked within +/- 5 places of each other. The latest tables are around 30%. Back in 2014 there were no really extreme differences, in the latest 1 in 10 have a difference of over 40 places.

The Graun - hence the word - does have form for corrections after initial release, so I wonder if we may see movement in some of the more extreme placement differences.

On a different tangent no doubt Durham (amongst others) are relieved that no financial sustainability metrics are used. Yet.

The DM gave top spot to Leicester

I think Leicester was its "University of the Year", as opposed to being ranked 1st in its league table - that looks to be Imperial.(?)

Probably don't read the Graun at the Mail. 😀 https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/aug/22/university-of-leicester-facing-major-incident-over-crumbling-buildings

@Arconialiving The CUG tables for subjects are useful. Some of the others, as you can see, are dubious. My DDs wanted a degree employers respected and could be used as a springboard for their careers They realised that if you are doing arts or a non science degree, go to the best uni you can get to! What are career objectives and how will uni course ensure DC get what they want? If they don’t want much and 3 years of study and fun is the main objective, look for fun cities.

So filter by grades required, campus or not, distance from home if it matters, and cost of living if it matters. You really have no idea of quality of lecturing from an open day. None at all. You do get to see buildings and get a feel for a place on a ludicrously busy day!

If your dc wsnts law, don’t choose Solent. One aspect that’s missing in the Guardian is quality of law job acquired afterwards!

@boys3 You are in overdrive for this topic. I do think it’s a huge shame parents believe some of this rubbish in the Guardian. It’s misleading and actually should have a big health warning attached. We can all laugh about Solent and law but it’s not acceptable to say it’s better than Durham or Bristol (LNAT unis) when it plainly is not by any reasonable criteria. Thats the point really. Reasonable criteria being used so dc and parents are not mislead.

@Arconialiving - DD is studying an arts course, so a lot was based on reputation (which can be out of date) but she knew exactly what she wanted to study on the course and how may contact hours she wanted. It was a case of trawling the through websites and attending open days and asking lots of questions. One really poor course I'm aware of, because it's close to home, is quite high up in the Guardian league table.

With DS, he studied engineering, which I know nothing about, so I felt I was groping in the dark. We used several uni league tables, ruled out the unis he wouldn't get the grades for and those with a poor reputation and plumped for a middle university in a city with cheap accommodation (you need to be able to afford the accommodation!!!) I think the course was also accredited by a professionally body. With hindsight we probably should have looked into the actual course content a lot more, found out how many contact hours he would have (he actually had quite a lot, but that was just luck) and actually attended some open days. The deal breaker for DS was that the uni he chose actually interviewed him and didn't give him an unconditional offer. I've no idea if that's a good or bad thing. DS left university with no wish to be an engineer. I now advise my friends that it's OK if their DC don't know what they want to study, wait a year or two and don't rush into a course just because everyone else is going to uni, unless you can self fund a second degree. Also, don't let a 17yo pick a uni course based on Guardian league tables!