UK University Ranking 2003

The latest ranking for UK universities is just out.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,716,00.html

 

Time to stop!

In my view, it is time to stop all this complete nonsense about ranking universities. However you twist and turn the statistics, in my view, they do no one any good at all! By the way, I am a faculty member in one of the highest ranking universities! You simply cannot compare apples and oranges and that is all this (and other) exercise is about! For example, wehat Derby does well Durham, Oxofrd et al donlt even bother to engage with! It is 'horses for couyrses' and all this research five star deluxe hotel rating nonsence (and the funding arrangements that go with it) will have to stop! Twenty five years ago when he was President of the Carnegie Foundation, Ernest Boyer int he USA urged US universities not to go down 'just the research route' to assess institutions and faculty. They did! Ten years later he was proved right and they moved as much towards the quality of teaching as they do research. Britain has yet to learn this lesson!

Got that off my chest - again!

 

First: Thanks to Jonnie for posting the list. Dude, this rant isn't directed at you, and I hope that's clear; but I ran across something from the USN&WR the other day that turned my crank on this issue, and I have to schpiel:

The problem runs deeper than research versus teaching.

Most of us tend to basically have a mathematical way of looking at the universe; this is why all athletes, cars, people, and schools are perceived as objectively "better than" or "worse than" other athletes, cars, people, and schools, even though there is no such thing as isolated generic "quality." When we say a "high-quality car," we might mean that it consumes less gasoline in getting from point-A to point-B or that its design is more aesthetically appealing to us or that its safety system has been designed with great expense and care or all of the above, and from these we derive the imaginary value called "quality"--at which point we apply this standard of "quality" against other automobiles, e.g. we speak of a cheap automobile being low-quality when, in fact, it is a much higher-quality vehicle to someone who can't afford anything more expensive. This reverse-application of quality is a case of taking the concrete and translating it into the abstract and then applying the abstraction as if it were concrete. A.N. Whitehead called this "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness."

When you apply the standard of "quality" to schools, things get even more ridiculous because schools are run in a very complex way, and no two seem to share the same priorities. DeVry is not a low-quality school; it is very high quality for students who want to take profession-oriented night classes. The University of Phoenix is not a low-quality school if it meets the needs of its students (and clearly it does, or it wouldn't have over half a million graduates). Yale is very low-quality to someone who can't afford it or isn't eligible to apply. The Universal Life Church's $5 Doctor of Divinity is very high-quality to someone who wants to purchase a gag gift; a Harvard Ph.D. in Theology would be low-quality for this purpose. And so forth.

All that aside, I love school rankings and find them to be delightful reading--and I support them, as long as (a) the criteria are neatly laid out so folks can know why School A is supposedly "better" than School B and (b) nobody takes the "quality" business too seriously. It's a vague and inadequate label. I think everyone on this board knows that, but I wonder how many casual readers of The Times share in that knowledge.


Cheers,

 

Tom!

I see where you're coming from but we'll have to agree to disagree! Of course, life requires we have some kind of 'yardsticks', and it has always been that way. Your assertion that......Most of us tend to basically have a mathematical way of looking at the universe.......is emp

 

Re: Tom!

I won't, because I'm not really sure we disagree; I wasn't really arguing with you. I think I was arguing with The Establishment, The Man, etc. Sorry for any confusion.


Cheers,

 

Hi,

Also, thanks to Jonathan - they always make interesting reading ... and analysis.

So I can see that my three UK universities make the Top 10 on teaching quality but slip a bit on research, the highest overall being 14.

On the quality issue, Tom and telfax have some good points.

Which is why I'm waiting for "Education" to fully embrace the only recognised international standard for implementing and running a Quality Management System, namely ISO 9001:2000.

Also, the beauty of this standard is that different approaches to education (as Tom points out) are readliy accommodated - but all of the required quality management elements must be present, and with all that goes with it.

Regards,

Neil Hynd

 

Thanks for the list. However, I must agree that it is impossible to compare different levels of institutions. I work at one of the lower ones (ranked in the 70's). It is impossible to compare mine, a new university, with one of the traditional universities. Our student base is different, our research profile is different. The list will simply continue to build a gap between the 'haves' who get the best students and most money and the 'have-nots' who are continued to be viewed as lesser mortals.

Just because my university is lower down the order, does not mean it is incapable. We have one of the largest student bodies in the UK, have well above-average ratios of students from poorer backgrounds and build in application to every aspect of learning.

The traditional universities cannot and should not try to do this. Neither can be the same. Therefore a list like this becomes almost meaningless.