Guardian/Daily Mail Uni/Times Rankings 2024

You sure that's a thing? A lot of other unis have also posted about their results in the ST tables

And much of this information is already on the Times website.

A great achievement by St Andrews, but given offers from both Oxford/Cambridge and St Andrews how many would choose St Andrews? I can't imagine it will be many, other than perhaps a few Scottish residence who chose it to avoid the uni fees?

Admittedly, Oxbridge it put on a pedestal because of the early deadline and the fact that you can't apply to both. This separates them from the rest and makes them them very special in people's mind, especially with all the history and nobel prize winners etc.

So maybe the league table is correct. Maybe St Andrew's is just as good or even better than Oxbridge, but in terms of people perception and desire to go there, Oxbridge is very much in a league of it's own, and will stay that way for the foreseeable.

Expanding on your last paragraph, I do think that because of people's perceptions, it is very hard for a university to actually be seen as better,. especially as it's what people use to judge whether a league table is good or not.

Let's say Exeter University was first in a league table and was genuinely the best in the country. A lot of people would therefore dismiss that league table because it didn't match their own viewpoint, which is ridiculous. This sort of thinking means that no university can ever improve as people are stuck to old opinions about prestige.

Although you can't take league tables as gospel, it does still start to suggest that the gap between the Oxbridge duopoly and the next best few is narrowing. We see that in the US, where most Americans would not put much between the Ivy League+MIT+Stanford+Caltech schools in terms of reputation among employers and academics.

I don't recall ever seeing Oxbridge not #1 and #2 in the league tables until just a few years ago. 10 years ago the #1 and #2 positions in the league table were essentially a glass ceiling that had never been broken.

2001/2 Times University Guide ranked Oxford 3rd behind Cambridge then Imperial (at that time the Times was compiled by the person who moved over to produce the Complete University Guide....then the Times brought in the person who has now moved to the DM).

I have vague memories of a similar situation in some of the other tables for quite a few years over the millenium period (98ish to 2002ish). At the time Oxford had dire QAA scores compared to other providers so even their huge budget and high entry standards and "good" degrees measures didn't help them. And graduate destinations was still based on any job so Luton used to top that measure every year until the league tables commissioned Warwick to find a way to differentiate a "good" job.

It's interesting seeing this list from 22 years ago, as the positions have not changes that much, at least in the top 10 or so, which contains the usual suspects from today's tables. I imagine the tables in 20 or 30 years from now will not that be different from what they are now.

I doubt Exeter down at 37th would be happy to hear that!