League ratings
December 26th, 1996
A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 26th December 1996.
As we know, there are lies, damned lies and league tables, but if we can’t do much about the first two, we can get something useful from the third. Your report on the results of the assessment of university research quality (Dec. 20th) was at variance with presentations elsewhere.
Out of 192 institutions, UMIST and Bath jostle for sixth place after Oxbridge and three London colleges, but out of four possible ways of calculating quality, UMIST is sixth in two and equal sixth in the third.
Listing of the universities by number of departments with top ratings, as in your edition, is as much a reflection of size, which is already known, as of quality, which was the purpose of this particular asessment to establish. That said, Teeside University’s spokesman has a point.
This assessment is to determine the distribution of research money which the Government provides: the way industry distributes its research money might well produce a different ranking.