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university league tables

I was just wondering, what factor can really bring the university down in the league tables??
Is it the students UCAS points??
Or its there one factor that is more important then the others
It goes on many factors including but not limited to;

Student Satisfaction
How difficult the exams are
How many people achieve 1st, 2:1, 2:2, or 3rd
Employment ratings 6 months after graduating
Student Accommodation

And more.
Original post by bahjat93
I was just wondering, what factor can really bring the university down in the league tables??
Is it the students UCAS points??
Or its there one factor that is more important then the others


Each league table decides what weighting to give to element it includes in the league table but some are more mobile than others.

The "research" rating is based on the Research Assessment Exercise which only takes place every five years. Those figures therefore remain the same for five years.

Student satisfaction depends on a single years figures so if the university has some serious problems in one year it can plunge. However, in practise there are universities who typically have good student satisfaction figures and traditional poor performers.

Entrance grades and employment prospects tend to change quite slowly because what happens in one year tends to be influenced by what has gone before. The grades are actual UCAS points achieved and universities tend to have similar cohorts from one year to the next.

What can change with employment prospects is that if you have a university that has a lot of students doing courses where demand remains constant (medicine, nursing, teaching) and one where market forces effect employability (business, economics, history) then they will alter relative to one another.

What can change substantially is university spending. The figures for spending are very unreliable and often depend on accounting treatment in the university's books. Change the accounting methodology and you change the outcome without changing the underlying amount spent. This is best explained by thinking of the library cleaners. Are they carried on the library budget or a separate cleaning budget? Different universities do it differently. Switch that expenditure from one to the other, and it will alter the league tables.

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