University Rankings: Useful or Not (2)

University League tables and rankings can give you a quick impression of relative quality and can help you distinguish educational reputation of each university.  However, they are also controversial, especially since there are no ‘official’ rankings, but mainly tables published by a variety of UK newspapers. At different times of year, rankings by the Times, the Sunday Times (you need to pay to get this online), the Financial Times and the Guardian are released.  Several magazines such as the Economist also release rankings, often around specific course areas such as MBAs. The Daily Telegraph newspaper tries to combine all the others into a single set of results.  In addition to these sources, the UK government also monitor the quality of teaching and research at the universities through the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). The RAE is only completed every few years – most recently in 2008 – so is not always up-to-date.  Wikipedia gives its own kind of summary of the different tables here sourced from the various sources.  Moreover, there are a lot of online sources which provide university rankings.  The Times Higher Education Supplement is one of the most trusted online sources regarding Higher Education in the UK and now has a Global ranking based on reputation surveyed from academics and professors around the world.  It is for this reason that many people believe that the Times rankings are the best indicator of university reputation and quality.

So which ranking or reputation indicator is the best judge of quality?  This is a very difficult question to answer.  There are a few questions you should ask before deciding which league table or ranking set is the most suitable for you:

• How the results are calculated?  Are they weighted towards research?  Or teaching?  Or facilities?  Or student satisfaction?

• Who they are aimed at?  Are the league tables aimed at Undergraduate (Bachelors) or Postgraduate (Masters) students?

• Which ranking should you trust?  Have there been big jumps and drops in placement for many universities in the past year or two?  Do you think it’s possible for a university to improve by 20 places in just one year?

• Are you more concerned about the overall ranking of the university or the ranking of the subject you are looking to study?

Why are the rankings so different?

The rankings are different because the methodology for each ranking is different.  Because each ranking uses different calculations, it’s possible for a university in The Times ranking to be 30 places above the same University in the Guardian ranking or any other.  On the whole, the Times tends to favour strong research, the Guardian is aimed at Undergraduate students and does not factor in research, while the less well known Complete University Guide published by the Independent tends to be the most comprehensive covering more categories than the others.  However, if you’re most interested in specific areas such as teaching quality or research, you may not want a league table that measures many factors equally but you might prefer one that judges one or two areas more than the rest.

Also the Universities have to return a set of data about their students and the university  to the UK government’s Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and all the different rankings use this data but often in different ways.  As with any statistics, the data can be presented in different ways so if a university wanted to influence its position in a ranking it could prepare its data accordingly, but this will only work for one league table.  There has been a move towards aiming for higher positions in the global rankings rather than national rankings for some universities and this means their position in national league tables may be affected as their data is focused on the global rankings.  For example in 2011 The University of Manchester is ranked 51 in the UK by the Guardian rankings but 48 in the world by the Times Higher – clearly they can’t both be right so which one do you trust?

The rankings are useful guides to UK universities but are not perfect, and you should consider many different factors when trying to decide where to go and study.  Course content, campus, recreation, living environment and availability of work placements are all important factors that you should consider beside of ranking.  Below are the pros and cons of university rankings that you should consider as well.

Advantages of university rankings

• Rankings can give you a quick impression of relative quality and can help you distinguish academic reputation of each university.

• Ranking reports are written with the educational professional in mind, and these reports may improve overall standards of universities since they must compete to be the best.

• Rankings help reassure parents and family about the decisions their children are making for their future education.

Disadvantages of university rankings

• Rankings do not factor in whether the course content is suitable for you.

• These reports will mainly consider the bigger picture, educational terms and procedures, so you might not know much about the general campus, recreation place, and living environment.

• The data used for the rankings are mainly about research and undergraduate programmes, so they may not be very useful in choosing a postgraduate programme.

• The tables are useful to give an indication of the general reputation about a university but are not an exact or accurate guide – they don’t mean that the University ranked 7 is better than the university ranked 8 but rather these both have a good reputation.

Our counselling team has a lot of experience helping students find suitable courses for them – including factoring reputation and rankings into selecting the best universities to apply.  We are happy to help advise you with your applications, accommodation and visa application checking.  Our services are free of charge.

Visit our office on Silom Road between 10:00 and 18:00 from Monday to Friday or 10:00 to 16:00 on Saturdays or phone 026355230, email info@hands-on.co.th or visit www.hands-on.co.th for more information.