Is Manchester going to be a Top Ten uni soon?

Well it broke the "Golden Triangle" in research in last year's RAE, and on its website it has the possibility of being better than it was or whatever it said. But anyway, do you think Manchester is going to be a top ten uni? why, why not? when?

Reply 1

Ramryan

Yeah, they've got the resources, the numbers, and to be honest a lot of data stems from pre-merger.

But League tables, stay away seriously. I saw one set of data that put Manc as number 18th in the UK and 19th in the World.... ok............. :biggrin:

University of Manchester

Manchester

Reply 2

pcok

im so academic

What were you warned for?

Reply 3

Frodz

Depends what you mean by "top 10" and that would suggest it is not "top 10" already.......

If you mean top 10 in a UK newspaper league table, probably not.

UK league tables have a very curious methodology that arguably has little to do with how good a university actually is.

For some odd reason for example the Times Good University Guide uses unreliable NSS surveys and it's own byzantine way of presenting research scores (which as far as i can work out do not actually even relate to the 2001 RAE......).

And all this doesn't account for how notoriously bad HESA is at presenting the new UoM's actual figures correctly (was brought up in a UoM board meeting in fact). And of course it takes AGES for these to update with the latest figures, the Times 2009 uses 2006 HESA figures for graduate prospects which was low for manchester due to the above confusion over the merger. The 2008 HESA figures are available on unistats.com and show the figure to be over 10% higher, 67% ----> 78%. In a very crude way substituting this into the Times would put Manchester into the top 10 in this factor (of course other uni's scores will have changed to).

Not that i'm that bothered by this effect on Manchester's ranking, only those who think that because of these rankings "X" university is not as good as "Y". I would rather that people were attracted here that were intelligent enough for themselves to see through the nonsense of newspaper rankings.

If you mean going by international rankings, apparently it already is.

http://www.arwu.org/rank2008/ARWU2008_A(EN).htm

5th

http://www.topuniversities.com/university_rankings/results/2008/overall_rankings/top_100_universities/

7th

Do i believe this either? No, as again these have flaws as they tend to focus more on science, age and size factors which Manchester has an edge in.

On the other hand here is a Warwick academics take on them, especially in relation to national league tables.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/oswald/worldunis04.pdf

What we once called redbrick universities do better in world league
tables than I had expected. On closer inspection, they deserve to do
so. Most British newspapers have used silly ways of ranking
universities, and I believe that has misled many parents, and
distorted how people think about our nation’s institutions of higher
education. In my opinion these world rankings will do us painful good
because they focus back on a university’s core business: ideas. The
amount you spend on your sports facilities does not matter a jot in the
world university league table. Research quality is everything.

Personally I would say the RAE is probably the least biased, and most specific way of ranking any component of a universities work we have, though it's nowhere near perfect. And the results clearly show that for both overall quality and quantity of research, Manchester is amongst the top institutions.

Reply 4

faber niger

Who cares? I'll leave the rating of buildings to architects. Otherwise, I'll rate students as I encounter them...

Reply 5

leeming

pcok

What were you warned for?

seen a lot of them posts lately where it doenst look like it should of been warned unless they posted it in a stupid forum?

Id say manchester was one of the "top" unis in UK, but there is bit more than just 10 in that criteria. I think it matters more for the rep of the dept