Poll of polls

Silly season is upon us… A “poll of polls” as produced by the Times Higher Education. It is a simple average of rankings of the most recent UK league tables published. No claims are made, rightly, for statistical rigour. This would qualify as what Peter Snow in his swingometer days would have described as “just … Continued

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by Paul Greatrix

Registrarism

2/08/08

Paul Greatrix

Registrar, The University of Nottingham

by Mark Leach

staff

22/10/14

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

Silly season is upon us…

A “poll of polls” as produced by the Times Higher Education. It is a simple average of rankings of the most recent UK league tables published. No claims are made, rightly, for statistical rigour. This would qualify as what Peter Snow in his swingometer days would have described as “just a bit of fun”:

1 Oxford
2 Cambridge
3 London School of Economics
4 Imperial College London
5 Warwick
6 St Andrews
7 University College London
8 Durham
9 York
10 Loughborough

Back in 2003 the Daily Telegraph (in lieu of any other league table effort and without a disclaimer) undertook a very similar exercise. The results were:

1 Cambridge
2 Oxford
3 Imperial
4 LSE
5 Warwick
6= Nottingham
6= UCL
8 York
9 Bristol
10 Manchester

So top 5 the same apart from the Oxbridge switch, UCL and York remain but three big Russell Group institutions, Nottingham, Bristol and Manchester, usurped by smaller 94 group universities, St Andrews, Durham and Loughborough.