The league table that no-one wanted

This is very much the lonely pup in the higher education Christmas shop. Everyone this year is doing a ranking of their most popular and most read articles of the last 12 months. And who am I to buck the trend, even though literally no-one has asked for such a list.

So, here it is, the unwanted ranking of top Registrarism articles of the year.

Obviously the top 10 is rather light on the serious stuff and has a bit of a bias towards university rankings, indeed with six league tables in the top 10 it is almost a ranking of rankings. Three of those six are real HE rankings but the other three are, I am afraid, made up ones. Indeed two of them are in fact fictional rankings of rankings. Which does therefore make this list at least partly a ranking of rankings of rankings.

Two of the other less weighty pieces in the list are items on HE jargon and a guide to sector pronunciation. Critical issues nevertheless, as I am sure you will agree.

Only two of the list are genuinely serious ones, mildly diverting essays on the importance of minute writing and killing off the essay mills.

The Top Ten Registrarism Articles of the Year, 2017

1. The Times & Sunday Times 2018 ranking: Top 20
2. The Times & Sunday Times 2017 ranking: Top placings
3. Run to the hills: A scary new university climate change ranking
4. Top 10 Dumbest University Rankings Ever
5. Your definitive guide to HE sector pronunciations
6. Latest Green Metric World Ranking 2016
7. Yet More Dumb University Rankings
8. Just a minute: the lost art of minute-writing
9. Cheats shouldn’t prosper: time to tackle the essay mills
10. An end to higher education jargon? Here’s the prospectus

This is not that exciting though and I therefore would rather have a list which included some of my favourites which, sadly, readers did not enjoy as much as the other stuff listed above.

The Top Ten Registrarism Articles of the Year, 2017 (split metrics version)

1. True Crime on Campus – the book launch
2. Recruiting Tomorrow’s Higher Ed Leaders
3. The Continuing Relevant of Ernest Boyer
4. Free Speech University Rankings: A Case of Grade Inflation
5. Gold! Your TEF playlist
6. University Administrators: Lovely and Well-Meaning but Still Below Stairs
7. Wonkhe Top Trumps
8. Institutional Memory: From Star Wars to the OfS
9. Rock and Enrol: Universities named after bands
10. A Branch Campus is for Life, Not Just for Brexit

Roll on 2018 for for yet more ranking fun/tedium (delete as appropriate).