The bumper thread of University League Tables discussion - includes an info post

Isn't the Times table out today?

The Times GUG 2013 is out!


1 Oxford (1)
2 Cambridge (2)
3 LSE (3)
4 Imperial (4)
5 Durham (6)
6 St Andrews (6)
7 UCL (5)
8 Warwick (8)
9 Bath (12)
10 Exeter (10)
11 Bristol (13)
12 Lancaster (9)
13 York (11)
14 Edinburgh (15)
15 Glasgow (-)
16 Loughborough (20)
17 Leicester (17)
18 Sussex (14)
18 Southampton (19)
20 Nottingham (16)

Don't have access to the full tables, but linky.

Hey, can anyone give me the The Times GUG 2013 top 30 university ranking and also the top 30 universities for English? Thanks, really appreciate it

Massaging of figures I can see yet again by The Times.

How covenient in the employment table that Manchester is top with LONDON second!

Didn't know there was a university called LONDON..

Does anyone know why UCL fares 'relatively' badly in comparison to LSE and Imperial, since people generally say they are equals.. UCL ranks 8th 7th 7th, which seems strange.

Really, when? This was an often-used powerpoint (at a rather contemptable talk) by a university strategist on how to improve the standings of a new university I taught for a year at on league tables. Back then it also included York. It's possibly one of the tables they weren't using- but it seemed legitimate enough to me. If that fact is indeed wrong, then I defer to your knowledge!

Really, when? This was an often-used powerpoint (at a rather contemptable talk) by a university strategist on how to improve the standings of a new university I taught for a year at on league tables. Back then it also included York. It's possibly one of the tables they weren't using- but it seemed legitimate enough to me. If that fact is indeed wrong, then I defer to your knowledge!

I don't know the exact dates, sorry - UCL was some years ago though and I think Imperial only dropped out this year. My sister works at Warwick (and I hope to study there ) and they understandably like this stat as they are one of the ones that haven't dropped out!

Institutions known to favour Oxbridge include but are not confined to BBC, MI5, Goldman Sachs, most of the broadsheets, etc.

I recall seeing a graduate recruitment brochure by Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) where they tabulated the graduates they recruited.

Oxbridge was about 10cm long, Exeter at 3cm and London (that's ALL London universities aggregated) only 2cm!

Can you provide evidence that this is the case?

Recruitment to the Security Services, as well as Diplomatic and Civil Service, does seem very competency based and it might well be that, because of the way Oxford and Cambridge are organised (both in their admissions and teaching), and that graduates from these universities tend to be from the higher socio-economic groups, that they are more confident and able to meet these compentences. That's poorly explained but I'm tired!

We must be careful in assuming that, as so many of a company's recruits are from certain universities, graduates from these universities must be favoured. Oxford and Cambridge are two excellent universities and the graduates among the cream of the crop, so we'd expect them to go far.

I've never seen any published information on MI5 or MI6, but I do know that, for the Civil Service, the reason why these graduates are so well represented are often because they form the bulk of people applying to these jobs. A cursory glance at the Civil Service intake a few years ago showed that graduates from certain former Polytechnics (Sunderland being the only one I can remember) had a 60% success rate in applying for the Fast Stream and some Russell Group universities (Liverpool) 40% but they did have far lower numbers of students applying than places like Oxford, Cambridge, Durham and Warwick who had below 10% success rate.

For a number of reasons (history, social class, the courses offered at different universities) graduates from "top" universities tend to be attracted to these companies/organisations more than those at other universities.

Similarly for the BBC, even if Oxford and Cambridge alumni are well represented, I'm not sure if there is an inherent bias. Indeed, many of the most well known and respected BBC journalists of the last 20 or 30 years are non-Oxbridge educated (Jeremy Vine, George Aliagiah, Kate Adie, Huw Edwards) though admittedly these people are still from Russell and 1994 Group universities (Durham, Newcastle, Cardiff).

I'm not saying that there certainly isn't an inherent bias at these organisations, but I do know that they (particularly MI5 and MI6) are trying to "open up" and distancing themsleves from this image of tapping Oxbridge graduates on the shoulder and offering them a job.

Can you provide evidence that this is the case?

Recruitment to the Security Services, as well as Diplomatic and Civil Service, does seem very competency based and it might well be that, because of the way Oxford and Cambridge are organised (both in their admissions and teaching), and that graduates from these universities tend to be from the higher socio-economic groups, that they are more confident and able to meet these compentences. That's poorly explained but I'm tired!

We must be careful in assuming that, as so many of a company's recruits are from certain universities, graduates from these universities must be favoured. Oxford and Cambridge are two excellent universities and the graduates among the cream of the crop, so we'd expect them to go far.

I've never seen any published information on MI5 or MI6, but I do know that, for the Civil Service, the reason why these graduates are so well represented are often because they form the bulk of people applying to these jobs. A cursory glance at the Civil Service intake a few years ago showed that graduates from certain former Polytechnics (Sunderland being the only one I can remember) had a 60% success rate in applying for the Fast Stream and some Russell Group universities (Liverpool) 40% but they did have far lower numbers of students applying than places like Oxford, Cambridge, Durham and Warwick who had below 10% success rate.

For a number of reasons (history, social class, the courses offered at different universities) graduates from "top" universities tend to be attracted to these companies/organisations more than those at other universities.

Similarly for the BBC, even if Oxford and Cambridge alumni are well represented, I'm not sure if there is an inherent bias. Indeed, many of the most well known and respected BBC journalists of the last 20 or 30 years are non-Oxbridge educated (Jeremy Vine, George Aliagiah, Kate Adie, Huw Edwards) though admittedly these people are still from Russell and 1994 Group universities (Durham, Newcastle, Cardiff).

I'm not saying that there certainly isn't an inherent bias at these organisations, but I do know that they (particularly MI5 and MI6) are trying to "open up" and distancing themsleves from this image of tapping Oxbridge graduates on the shoulder and offering them a job.

Can you provide evidence that this is the case?

Recruitment to the Security Services, as well as Diplomatic and Civil Service, does seem very competency based and it might well be that, because of the way Oxford and Cambridge are organised (both in their admissions and teaching), and that graduates from these universities tend to be from the higher socio-economic groups, that they are more confident and able to meet these compentences. That's poorly explained but I'm tired!

We must be careful in assuming that, as so many of a company's recruits are from certain universities, graduates from these universities must be favoured. Oxford and Cambridge are two excellent universities and the graduates among the cream of the crop, so we'd expect them to go far.

I've never seen any published information on MI5 or MI6, but I do know that, for the Civil Service, the reason why these graduates are so well represented are often because they form the bulk of people applying to these jobs. A cursory glance at the Civil Service intake a few years ago showed that graduates from certain former Polytechnics (Sunderland being the only one I can remember) had a 60% success rate in applying for the Fast Stream and some Russell Group universities (Liverpool) 40% but they did have far lower numbers of students applying than places like Oxford, Cambridge, Durham and Warwick who had below 10% success rate.

For a number of reasons (history, social class, the courses offered at different universities) graduates from "top" universities tend to be attracted to these companies/organisations more than those at other universities.

Similarly for the BBC, even if Oxford and Cambridge alumni are well represented, I'm not sure if there is an inherent bias. Indeed, many of the most well known and respected BBC journalists of the last 20 or 30 years are non-Oxbridge educated (Jeremy Vine, George Aliagiah, Kate Adie, Huw Edwards) though admittedly these people are still from Russell and 1994 Group universities (Durham, Newcastle, Cardiff).

I'm not saying that there certainly isn't an inherent bias at these organisations, but I do know that they (particularly MI5 and MI6) are trying to "open up" and distancing themsleves from this image of tapping Oxbridge graduates on the shoulder and offering them a job.

Re evidence, if you happen to have the Accenture recuitment brochure from the late 90s onwards, you would see the figures.

Re evidence, if you happen to have the Accenture recuitment brochure from the late 90s onwards, you would see the figures.

As someone else mentioned on this topic, yesterday's league table in The Times showed that LONDON came second in employment, a non-statistic given the Uni of London does not exist.

There are many colleges in London, some are top but others obviously are not, so to aggregate them is meaningless and does a disservice to the likes of Imperial and LSE.

Aggregate statistics for a the employment at a university aren't always good for comparison. Imperial has a lot of engineering and medical students, and comparing the employment statistics of Imperial to say Cambridge which has people studying SPS or linguistics doesn't make sense.

To compare employment at Oxbridge with say Imperial or LSE, you'd want to compare the individual departments.

The league tables probably aggregated the employment statistics of London universities because there are a lot of specialist institutions, and they wanted a broader picture of employment. But I agree that that approach doesn't make any sense either given that you'd expect Imperial to be better than London South Bank.

Anyway, both approaches I've just discussed seem to be poor ways of comparing employment between unis.