Exeter University does a survey of Universities each year that is published in the Times newspaper. I thought I’d have a look at this and produce a laymans view.
The criteria are; Student Satisfaction, Research Quality, Entry Standards, Student / Staff ratio, Services and facilities spend, completion, good honours, graduate prospects. These are all scored.
Top is Oxford with a total of 1000 points. It isn’t immediately obvious how this 1000 was calculated although I guessed it is the benchmark and the others would be a percentage of this top figure for easy comparison. However a simple calculation resulted in the university with 504 points only having about 40% of Oxfords total so I havn’t persevered to work it out.
It must be difficult for Exeter as they did the exercise and got it independantly assessed. However they rose significantly in the table. Their out-performance in student satisfaction being compensated by low entry standards. Does any university look at this and say we can improve a bit here and jump up?
Overall the table looks like a useful indicator but I’d be wary of being too precise in analysing it. For example I’d be wary of subjective measures like student satisfaction. Facilities spend is another skewed area as a university building a new extension will get more than one that’s just finished building one. Do you want to study on a building site? Student / staff ratio might hide other factors like part-time or distance learners. In general the table order looks like you’d expect it to. Without advice on interpreting this my own method is to look at individual statistics to see if any stand out and take all of it as an indication and not as an absolute.
Out of 114 organisations UCL was 78th a fall of 15 places. A total of 392 points compared to Oxfords 1000. To maintain their position they would need another 40 points which might be in the level of error. Interestingly Graduate Prospects at UCL would put them well up the table which is something I’d be interested in as a student. On the other hand completion and entry standards are a bit lower than those around it and student staff ratio is a bit higher. So if you do complete prospects are better than many, at that time.
Oxford and Cambridge are in a league of their own, like Manchester United and Chelsea at football. You then come to those with good research quality and consistent spread with points over 600. Then a middling ruck and some floating adrift at the bottom due to a couple of bad scores.
If I was a student I’d find this interesting yet I’d know what sort of place I wanted to go to. Take York – nice city, newish buildings, good reputation, same for Lancaster. Or would I want a big city. If I was a parent I’d say Lancaster(23rd a fall of 4), in the country. If I was a student I’d say Manchester(24th a rise of 3) in the heart of the city. Well maybe anyway, I should be thinking about intellect. Depends on your subject and your results and if you can make an impression. I have a degree from the Open University and it isn’t on the list. Having left school with nothing there is still a way in with the OU although it’s a lot more expensive now than when I did it.