A number of organisations produce university league tables |
MANY ORGANISATIONS produce rankings of UK universities and colleges offering higher education courses but there are no official UK league tables.
Those tables that are produced, such as The Sunday Times University League Table, use a variety of data sources which may or may not have had input or support from the universities themselves.
As a result, the position of a university or college in a league table can vary enormously depending on the criteria used to work it out and the different weightings used.
One national newspaper website allows you to change the method of calculating the subject tables so that you can decide which criteria are most important to you and, as a result, different institutions change places easily up or down the table.
Seeing how easy it is to reorganise the rankings should tell you that the criteria a newspaper uses to select the best places to study a subject may not necessarily be the criteria you might use.
What part of the country a university or college is in, for example, might be a very important factor for you and if that was put into the criteria, your favourite course may come top!
That said, very few people will resist casting an eye over league tables and some universities actually encourage it by drawing attention to their position if it’s particularly good.
Just remember league tables can be useful as long as you read them with a critical eye and a healthy dose of scepticism.
To help you do this, the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) publishes a helpful booklet called How to Read League Tables.
There are no centrally controlled course curricula, so it is difficult to compare the achievements of different institutions.
Some universities have many departments and the standards and quality provided by each department can vary. League tables might help a bit, but they might not. What will help you choose is thorough research on the university or college website, looking at independent reviews of teaching and research, such as those provided by Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), and information available on the Unistats website.
Don't forget, a visit to a university or college and asking lots of questions when you're there can tell you a lot more that is relevant to you as an individual than a league table can. |
