World University Rankings

I'm struggling to understand why LSE and Warwick, two of the best universities in the UK, punch way below their weight in the world league tables. Warwick is currently at 58 in the QS ranking, and LSE is at 69.

If the order of UK universities in the world rankings was the same as the order in the domestic rankings, LSE should be definitely be in the higher half of the top ten, and Warwick should be somewhere between 5 to 15 (no lower than 20), seeing as their peers - UCL and Imperial - are both firmly in the top ten.

Why are Glasgow, King's, Manchester and Bristol ahead of them? They're still great unis, but it's pretty clear they don't have the same reputation as LSE or Warwick, with academics or employers.

Or am I completely missing something?

Reply 1

George Holluic

yeah warwick is rubbis

Reply 2

River85

Original post by naproxen250

Why are Glasgow, King's, Manchester and Bristol ahead of them? They're still great unis, but it's pretty clear they don't have the same reputation as LSE or Warwick, with academics or employers.[/QUOTE]

Well the fact that they rank higher in the global tables, and that these tables have a greater focus on peer reviews and employer reviews (instead of student satisfaction and entry standards), suggests this isn't the case.

How are UCL and Imperial "peers" to Warwick and LSE? I assume you think it's because they rank in the top ten. Durham also consistently ranks in the top 10 (only falling out of it in the late 90s and early 00s), but it usually ranks anywhere between 75th and 140th in the THES and QS rankings. This only serves to demonstrate that the tables take very different things into consideration.

LSE is a specialist institution. It ranks very highly in social science rankings, but not as high in the general rankings. This is sometimes because the general rankings are biased toward the sciences.

As for Warwick's (and Durham's) positions...perhaps it's the case that they aren't as good as you think, relative to those other Russell Group universities?

Reply 3

Hankylord

I'm pretty sure the world rankings favour universities with strong science backgrounds/specialities. LSE would be low, therefore, for obvious reasons, and Warwick's strengths lie largely in the social sciences (economics, philosophy etc) and arts and humanities. I think that's why Manchester does surprisingly well.

Reply 4

naproxen250

[QUOTE="River85;42507713"]

Original post by naproxen250

I know it appears not to be the case, but my point is: why should we take on board any of what these rankings tell us when there seems to be so many flaws and anomalies?

The peer review measure has been criticised from all angles, and a couple of weeks ago, QS announced they were completely overhauling that measure because it emerged that academics were using it tactically to bolster their own institutions. In what world does the University of British Columbia genuinely have almost the same academic reputation score as Harvard?

In terms of the employer review measure, LSE and Warwick were two of only 13 universities in the world to receive a perfect 100 score. This seems a far more credible measure: what do employers have to gain from voting tactically? Far less than academics.

It seems the citation per faculty measure really drags them down as well. This measure has a clear bias towards science-focused institutions, which is probably why LSE has a score of 17.4, Warwick 37, and, at the other end, Imperial with a score of 87.3.

Reply 5

nulli tertius

Original post by naproxen250

In terms of the employer review measure, LSE and Warwick were two of only 13 universities in the world to receive a perfect 100 score. This seems a far more credible measure: what do employers have to gain from voting tactically? Far less than academics.

That is only valid if their survey reaches out to all graduate employers fairly. It is impossible to tell from their website but one doubts that they got a detailed response from the Chinese People's Liberation Army, Indian State Railways and the NHS which are three of the world's largest employers of graduates.

If you think that the two largest graduate careers in this country are teaching and nursing, how well did this survey reach out to employers in those fields.

One suspects that the survey was the usual round robin of banks, global accountancy practices and management consultants. If my suspicions are right, then it is hardly surprising that Warwick and LSE do well.

Reply 6

AdvanceAndVanquish

Subject rankings are always more reliable. Think about a student who gets an A in chemistry and a D in English. He will come across in the general grade rankings as average, but that just obscures what's actually going on. Overall university rankings are the same.

Reply 7

anniemagnificent

It is odd; neither Warwick nor LSE have ever been outside the domestic top ten (and the only other universities that can say that are Oxford and Cambridge) but they do underperform in the global tables. As others have said, the focus of the international league tables on the sciences badly affects both (the arts and humanities, and to a lesser extent the social science, are prized even less in some cultures than they are here) and tables which also take a peer assessment measure will also disadvantage a young institution like Warwick.

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Reply 8

ukmed108

Don't worry about it. St Andrews is ranked in the top 10 of domestic rankings and is around 100th in the world (92 by QS 108 by THE?) in world rankings. All this can be explained by the fact that world rankings compare research. Science traditionally has the most research funding and citations and the rankings benefits larger institutions.

Look at some of the institutions on the list, NYU, UC Santa Barbara and some state schools are ranked above Ivy League institutions like Dartmouth. Dartmouth is only 100x more competitive and prestigious than most of these state schools and yet it is not even in the top 100. That is because Dartmouth is a small school without much research.

Employers will always still know that Dartmouth is more prestigious than a state school and will rank based on that way.

Did you know that the University of Toronto, ranked 19th in the QS rankings, is actually about as difficult to gain entry as University of Northampton for some of its subjects? But, UofT has research on its side and invests heavily into it. As a result, even though some of their students are probably better suited to a trade school, they still have a very high world ranking.

You don't need world rankings to confirm your superiority if you were actually superior :smile:

(P.S. you never see Oxbridge types complaining about their uni ranking dropping or fluctuating, they know they are the best)

Besides, i rarely see anyone complain about the massive English bias on the World Rankings. India, a country with over 1 billion people doesn't even have a representative in the top 100 universities. IIT, a school with an acceptance rate of 0.1% isn't ranked anywhere in the top 100 and I haven't seen them complaining. The rankings are literally dominated by US, UK, Canada and Australia, all English speaking countries. The language of research papers is English and as such English speaking universities dominate due to this fact.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 9

ElChapo

Original post by ukmed108

Yeah but the research coming out of India how significant is it? I can't remember seeing news of a scientific breakthrough from India, not saying they're no good but the world leading research is happening in the Western world still. Despite that India are churning out many graduates and the future looks good for them :wink: