British University Rankings

The ranking of universities according to some specific set of criteria is often an important—but by no means the only—factor in deciding where to study in Britain. Some popular sites which contain ranking information are:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/

http://education.guardian.co.uk/universityguide2008/

http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm

Shanghai Jiaotong University publishes the oft-cited Academic Ranking of World Universities. It uses a clear set of weighted criteria: number of Nobel Laureates, Fields Medalists and Highly-Cited Researchers, publications in Nature and Science, results from Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). This is one way of ranking universities and does not necessarily include other factors which are important to the prospective student.

The Times (as well as the Financial Times) have their rankings of UK universities which are derived from indicators like:

• Student satisfaction (based on the National Student Survey)
• Research assessment (based on the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) results)
• Entry standards (UCAS tariff points of new students from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA))
• Student-staff ratio (data also from HESA)
• Expenditure per student on various areas like library, computing, sports facilities (HESA data)
• Percentage of students finishing and their class of degree (HESA data)

The Guardian has its ranking of UK universities which is based on somewhat similar criteria that the Times use.

Nevertheless, the different “methodologies” do reveal significant differences. Whether only these are relevant to the potential student is another matter.

What is also very good is that both the Times and Guardian sites also have pages with content related to student life and higher education in general (http://education.guardian.co.uk/ and http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/)

Kiley