Time Higher Education World Uni Rankings 2013-14 revealed

These league tables have a massive bias towards household names. Like I don't think I have ever met anyone (and doubt I ever will) who would say Manchester Uni (still a really good institution) was better than Durham, Warwick, Bristol. Nor do I believe Royal Holloway is better than Exeter, Southampton and Birmingham; just add the words University of London to your uni's name to move up 50 places on world rankings. And Bath ranked 276-300 below Essex and Hertfordshire (both good uni's). What are they smoking over there?

Need I go on

In short I don't really understand why these rankings exist as they seem to illustrate nothing (subject specific rankings I can understand more) but this comparing like comparing apples with aircraft carriers, and I sincerely hope no one ever bases they university choices on this hokum.

Cambridge was below Oxford.

The league table is therefore not accurate and biased.

Cambridge > Oxford.

If this post is not satirical, then its ridiculous. Of course league tables are going to produce different rankings if their methodology is different and while Cambridge does better on most tables, oxford probably does best when measured in this particular way. I'm pretty sure the times didn't sit down one day and say "lets design a league table just so we can put oxford ahead of cambridge".

Although I always read the rankings with a pinch of salt, I don't really see why University of Manchester, as an institution which has produced 25 Nobel Laureates up till now, is worse than the other three that you've mentioned. When I read the post, what came across my mind is that all four universities are all so well-established with different strengths in different areas. They are of the same tier in general. You may be able to draw a distinction between Oxbridge and the rest of the RG's universities , but not others.

I think its because Manchester has lower entry standards. It has a lot of noble laureates mainly because its such a big university that has a lot of researchers. Really, the number of laureates doesn't have much to do with the quality of the undergraduates.

Low standards on the micky mouse courses, not real subjects like maths, science, medicine, engineering, English, History etc.

Blah blah blah.


Oxford noob.

Cambridge has won more boat races than oxford.

Cambridge > oxford.



Posted from TSR Mobile

People read so much into rankings that they solely base their choice on them, i.e. instead of actual course content.
When these get challenged, they get annoyed when other universities beat them and break some kind of "mould".

Many universities went down, mine went up. I go to Royal Holloway.

Everyone that's saying the league tables are wrong because this university let's say, exeter, is better than another university, say that because they don't really look into it. Student satisfaction , international outlook are in many ways far superior.


Yeah.. this is a prime example. One university comes below another and it's worse than death.

Moral of the story: Many universities are better than your opinion of them.