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New from Wonkhe! University Top Trumps

Yes, it's the new card game set to sweep the higher education community - University Top Trumps. Available from Wonkhe and all good university bookshops.
This article is more than 6 years old

Paul Greatrix is Registrar at The University of Nottingham, author and creator of Registrarism and a Contributing Editor of Wonkhe.

Yes, it’s the new card game set to sweep the higher education community – University Top Trumps. Available from Wonkhe and all good university bookshops.

Rules

Each card in the Wonkhe University Top Trumps pack shows a list of data about the university. In this best-selling set the items covered are:

  • Year university was founded
  • Times Good University Guide ranking
  • Research Grant Income
  • TEF Rating

All the cards are dealt among the players (for extra fun the players may decide to be a vice chancellor or a registrar). There must be at least two players, and at least one card for each player. The starting player (normally the player sitting on the Dean’s left) selects a category from his or her topmost card and reads out its value. Each other player then reads out the value of the same category from their cards. The best (usually the largest; in the case of the year of origin though, lower is considered better) value wins the “trick”, and the winner takes all the cards of the trick and places them at the bottom of his or her pile. The winner then looks at their new topmost card, and chooses the category for the next round or ‘semester’.

In the event of a draw the cards are placed in the quad and a new category is chosen from the next card by the same person as in the previous round. The winner of that round obtains all of the cards in the quad as well as the top card from each player.

Players are eliminated when they lose their last card, and the ‘Chancellor’ is the player who obtains the whole pack.

‘The most fun you can have in a university.’ A vice chancellor

‘This needs a level playing field.’ DfE Official

‘It’s a cartel’ Lord Adonis (a card-tel surely? Ed.)

Other sets in the Wonkhe top trumps range are available too

  • Alternative providers – all your favourites here from BPP to the New College of the Humanities and the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation
  • Education ministers past and present – includes such luminaries as Keith Joseph, Tony Crosland, David Blunkett and even Margaret Thatcher
  • Vice Chancellor Top Trumps – the ideal gift for your favourite Lords cross-bencher
  • International Branch Campuses – a really diverse set from University of Nottingham Ningbo China to Paris-Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi to University of Reading in Malaysia
  • Team Wonkhe – all of your favourite Wonkhe writers
  • Sector agencies – JISC, UCAS, LFHE, they’re all here but which are best?
  • QS World Top 50 – the international creme de la creme
  • Famous Honorary Graduates – both serious and celeb ones
  • Spiked – universities featured in the so-called free speech ranking (discontinued due to making no sense at all)
  • Top Trump Top Trumps – the ever changing cast of staff in the White House

The ideal gift for the higher education wonk! Place your orders now.

2 responses to “New from Wonkhe! University Top Trumps

  1. And a gold anniversary edition, campus cats, ducks, geese and other animal stars of the HE world?

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