The Student Room Group

Is the guardian university league table a load of bullocks?

Nottingham university tells you the average starting salary for their graduates for each department on their website. The guardian league table gives a score for salary after 6 months. For civil engineering the Guardian has given Nottingham 72/100, on the Nottingham website it gives the average figure as £24500 or there abouts. Now for pharmacy, The guardian rates Nottingham 97/100, 25 points higher. If we now go onto the Nottingham website The average starting salary was UNDER £20000. Does this make sense? No. This is just one example but none of it adds up. What is the guardians score based upon, salaries and employment, just employment, just salaries?
Reply 1
I personally do not use the guardian. For economics in 4th place is Heriot-Watt and in 8th place is Buckingham compared to UCL in 11th place but UCL is the more respected university out of the two
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by Georgehigginson
Nottingham university tells you the average starting salary for their graduates for each department on their website. The guardian league table gives a score for salary after 6 months. For civil engineering the Guardian has given Nottingham 72/100, on the Nottingham website it gives the average figure as £24500 or there abouts. Now for pharmacy, The guardian rates Nottingham 97/100, 25 points higher. If we now go onto the Nottingham website The average starting salary was UNDER £20000. Does this make sense? No. This is just one example but none of it adds up. What is the guardians score based upon, salaries and employment, just employment, just salaries?


Just employment. Salaries are dependent on what company you work for.
Reply 3
Yeah I think its a load of BS. :L Best thing to do is go to the universities and talk to them yourself.
Yes.
Reply 5
BS sometimes
I wonder how they come up with them, because it's not like the people who've made the list have taken every course themselves. They could ask uni students, but the vast majority of students surely have no experience of any course apart from the one they have taken, so they can't exactly have any meaningful opinion on how the equivalent course at other universities stack up. Maybe it's decided based on graduate employment rate, average starting wages, something like that.
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 7
Original post by Matthew94
Just because it is more respected it doesn't mean it is better.

I believe Queens in Belfast is #1 for Pharmacy in the UK, would you tell people to go to UCL instead because it is more respected? I'd hope not.


Oh come on not that many people would reject somewhere like UCL for Queens in Belfast
They always have a very different opinion of where unis are placed than other sources. I'd like to know where they get their information from and what they base their ratings on. Southampton (my university for example) has been put at 28th behind places like SOAS and Herriott-Watt. But in the Times' it is 19th and in the Complete University Guide's table it is 14th.

I don't know how these places are coming up with such different standards. It'd be interesting to find out.

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