Are British universities world class?
This is a list of universities in the United Kingdom (alphabetical by substantive name). Below that are lists of university colleges and colleges of higher education, followed by a list of defunct institutions.
- Universities
- University colleges
- Colleges of Higher Education
- Defunct institutions
- See also
- External links
League tables of British universities which rank the performances of universities in the United Kingdom on a number of criteria, have been published every year by The Times newspaper and several other newspapers since the early 1990s. The factors used to assess universities include quality of teaching and research (which are assessed by external inspectors), entry standards and dropout rates. These league tables have become increasingly popular over the last few years and other papers such as The Guardian now publish their own tables annually. These tables are often used by students when deciding to which universities to apply. Some league tables are more specific, ranking universities on their strength in individual subjects, and not just overall teaching and research across a range of subjects.
Although the various tables differ slightly in how they assess universities, the same names tend to dominate the top positions. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge have typically headed the lists. Cambridge has generally fared better, claiming first place in most of the newspapers’ tables, with Oxford normally in second position. Oxford has recently been top of some lists though. However, The Sunday Times, which compiles its own tables using slightly modified criteria has placed Cambridge top for nine years running up to 2006. The only times since the inception of the tables that another university broke this trend were in 1999 and 2000, when Imperial College London overtook Oxford for second place in the Sunday Times Good University Guide[2].
Third place is taken by a variety of contenders (usually Imperial College, though the London School of Economics has placed third a few times). It is difficult to form a list of other high-achieving universities due to the different methodology used between league tables.
- Sutton Trust
- The Times’s methodology (2007)
- The Guardian’s methodology (2008)
- The Web Ranking of UK universities (2008)
- Complete University Guide 2009, in association with The Independent
- Daily Telegraph ‘table of tables’
- Sex-ratio and other tables
- Criticism
- See also
- References
- External links
This page has the following sub pages.
