Disparity between national and international league tables?

Why is that there's such a big difference in league tables? Universities that might be typically considered as excellent such as Warwick and Durham don't feature very highly in international rankings. Universities that are at the top of national rankings such as Loughborough, that being higher than Warwick and Durham, basically just aren't anywhere near the top of international rankings, instead being lower than the other two mentioned. King's is very high internationally but lower in national rankings. Why is this

Reply 1

Clearing and Applications Advisor

They measure different things

Reply 2

ChiefBrody

All league tables are made up - whoever is creating them selects the criteria they think is important (for my kids I made up my own)

If you look at the criteria, international league tables bias research quality (I think). Helpful for Post Grad probably less so for Under Grad

IMO the tables risk driving weird behaviour in Unis. One of the more divisive criteria is staff : student ratio, especially support staff. I was at a uni a few years back and the new VC set out to dramatically reduce support staff headcount to look better in the league tables - and the consequence was the academics had to do their own admin, stress / inefficiency went up and contact hours went down . . .

Reply 3

Mikisonic

To add to what others said,

international rankings focus more on prestige than national e.g King's CL fell off in recent years but still very high internationally as it simply has a better reputation whereas ST Andrews performing very well but has less renown

Regardless the rankings are not that important but do play a role, History BA at Oxford is better than History BA at BCU