Unveiling a new league table and asking people to look is a bit like extolling the virtues of a spare tyre. It’s not needed for any functional purpose, takes up space that could be used for better purposes and does not assist with current performance. Little wonder that about 30% of new cars don’t have one and something of surprise that university league tables continue to proliferate with the support and knowing glances of institutions that should know better.
The UniVanity League Table emerges from a review of the 141 institutional strategic plans and home pages of universities who are members of UUK. The table reflects a mixture of fact at a point in time, a scoring system* laced with bias, and an entirely personal component to replicate those well-established rankings that rely on questionnaire responses. It’s a similar methodology (or ‘mythology’ as a US News and World Report ex-editor told Malcolm Gladwell) to many of the major league tables.
53 of 141 institutions reviewed used rankings from major league tables** on their home page but, the UniVanity Table focuses on 27 who state that achieving a ranking, either explicitly or implicitly in a main league table, is a strategic objective. Elevating pursuit of rankings to this level looks, in many cases, like a vanity project and is certainly a distraction from the core business of a university. If fox-hunting is the ‘unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable’, chasing rankings may be considered the insecure in pursuit of the unnecessary.
Readers can be assured that this table, unlike most others, is made available without advertising from institutions and will not be developed or exploited for commercial gain or to build a database of students, parents, agents or government officials who might look at it. A celebratory event may be held if a sufficient number of universities are willing to invest their scarce resources to buy a table of ten at an appropriately salubrious London venue where they can eat, drink and dance the night away.
UNIVANITY LEAGUE TABLE 2022
You had one eye in the mirror**
Russell Group universities dominate the table with all top five places and nine of the overall positions which suggests that they feel a real need for external validation. It’s a reminder of the old McKinsey hiring dictum to recruit people who are “smart…driven by their insecurity;and..competitive”. Institutions that are in a club claiming to be for the “UK’s leading research-focused universities” should probably feel more comfortable in their quality.
The Group has always been slightly ambivalent about league tables with various press releases making the point that “League tables shouldn’t be used in isolation to make judgements about the quality of an institution..” (2015) and “Ranking universities is fraught with difficulties..” (2014). Perhaps it is the division in the views of the members themselves that has caused the Group to be silent on the issue in recent years. It is also something that Universities UK seems to steer well clear of with a search showing no comments on rankings and league tables at all.
Well you’re where you should be all the time
Tom Peter’s book What Gets Measured Gets Done borrowed the phrase from what he considers the soundest piece of management advice he ever heard, which is why it matters when universities elect to chase specific league table targets. With many strategic plans reaching a decade into the future it is just possible that the real driver is the ease with which current management can make supposedly visionary statements with no accountability for delivery. There is also a good deal of fudging of the actual measurement leaving future reporting to decide which table to report against.
Durham University’s strategy set a target to be Top 5 in the Times/Sunday Times league table by 2027 which could reflect that this is a much easier set of parameters to manage than the THE World Rankings where the institution’s position dropped from 96 to 162 from 2017 to 2022.
Liverpool takes a more nuanced stance in wanting to achieve “a UK top 20 worldwide ranking in a recognised international league table by 2026.” At one level this suggests that it is content to see its global position decline as long as other UK universities see the same or greater decline in their position. In the THE World Rankings the university was 25th in the UK and its overall world position had fallen from 158 to 178 since 2017.
Birmingham has made some progress but is falling some way short of its stated ambition of “..ranking within the top 50 global institutions in the leading international tables”. Since 2017, they have moved from 130 to 105 in the THE but have fallen from 79 to 90 in the QS rankings since 2019 and have been becalmed in the 101-150 ranking of AWRU for the last five years. The timescale for achieving top 50 is 2030 but the incoming Vice Chancellor must be wondering how the growing strength of other countries will mitigate against further progress.
The great shame is that each university has a Strategic Plan that is choc full of ideas, creativity, energy and brilliant stories of how they intend to make students, the economy and the world better off. These are good reasons that holding the institutions sense of worth, progress and well being ransom to a vainglorious punt on league tables makes so little sense.
You Gave Away the Things You Loved
Reviewing over 140 university Strategic Plans is a reminder of the transformative power that institutions have and the tradition of diversity, quality and excellence that they offer. It reminded me of Sir Howard Newby, then chief executive of HEFCE, commenting that, “I think the English – and I do mean the English – do have a genius for turning diversity into hierarchy..”. Perhaps the league table compilers play on this genius to tempt universities into trading instincts for collaboration and cooperation for a system that encourages game playing and one upmanship.
Whatever the reason, the willingness to be judged by external forces seems contrary to the notion of universities as autonomous, self-governing institutions. The sector has, over time, grumbled mightily about REF, teaching quality framework, NSS and others, so willingly paying homage at the altar of QS, THE, AWUR et al seems out of character. It is reasonable to measure progress but there are many more targeted mechanisms for determining performance.
By engaging so actively and giving prominence to league tables, universities are also giving significant opportunities for the commercialization of data from potential students. It is another example of a sector which is struggling to come to terms with the reality that for many organizations education has become just another business opportunity. External investment and for-profit organizations are very welcome where they serve the interests of students, research and teaching but the sector should act collectively to prevent exploitation and ensure that it receives a reasonable slice of any revenue being generated.
Notes
* The final score is generated from six categories. These are: mention (explicit or implicit) of ranking/tables as a measure of performance in the strategic plan; whether the strategic plan was downloadable/easily searchable; how many years are left on the plan; whether rankings were mentioned on the university homepage; Russell Group membership and; whether the compiler had visited the campus and enjoyed the experience.
**’main league table’ generally refers to those published by Times Higher Education, QS Quacquarelli Symonds, or Academic World University Ranking by Shanghai Rankings or in the UK by major national newspapers or the Complete University Guide.
***Sub-headings are, aptly, from You’re So Vain, a song by Carly Simon and released in 1972. It topped the charts in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and sparked years of speculations as to its subject. Simon has gone as far as to say that the song is about three men and Warren Beatty is one (verse two). Separately, she said the ‘apricot scarf’ was worn by American writer, Nick Delbanco.
****If any of the universities listed feel I have misunderstood the intention of their strategic plan or referred to an incorrect/out of date version I will be happy to receive authoritative corrections and note them on this blog.