A good league table guide?
| Date | 01 June 1997 |
| Published date | 01 June 1997 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09684889710165107 |
| Pages | 61-72 |
| Author | Mantz Yorke |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Introduction
“League tables” have now become a feature of
the landscape of higher education in a number
of countries, varying from those which purport
to inform student choice (in magazines such as
Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Stern (Ger-
many), US News and World Report (United
States), Maclean’s(Canada) and The Times
(United Kingdom)) to those which are more
concerned to report on the state of a higher
education system (such as the reports of the
quality assurance audits undertaken in Aus-
tralia (see CQAHE, 1995, and analogous
reports for the preceding years)). The former
category has particular attractions – not least
for the producers, who stand to profit substan-
tially from the sales of the relevant publications.
In the 1994 table produced by The Times
newspaper, 14 variables were used which,
weighted unequally, were used in the produc-
tion of an overall score. In the 1995 exercise
the number of variables was reduced to ten,
which were weighted equally in the calculation
of an overall score. Cannon (1995) acknowl-
edged that this reduction in number reflected
criticism of the technical quality of some of the
variables used in 1994 – for instance, two
variables relating to staff qualifications were
dropped, on the grounds that the proportion
of staff with professional qualifications was
difficult to interpret, and that the exclusion of
this variable then made it difficult to retain an
analogous variable relating to the proportion
of staff with PhDs. Income from research and
development was dropped, on the grounds
that some institutions found it difficult to
separate research income from other revenue,
and that it largely replicated research perfor-
mance in general. A slightly-weighted variable
relating to international students was also
dropped, on the grounds of equity.
The 1996 table was different from the
1995 table in two main respects: changes in
variables and sources of information. First,
two variables from the earlier table (postgrad-
uates and completion rate) were replaced by
teaching assessment (an index derived from
61
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 5 · Number 2 · 1997 · pp. 61–72
© MCB University Press · ISSN 0968-4883
A good league table
guide?
Mantz Yorke
The author
Mantz Yorkeis Director of the Centre for Higher Educa-
tion Development, Liverpool John Moores University,
Liverpool, UK.
Abstract
Subjects the league table of universities published in
The
Times
and
The Times Good University Guide
in 1995 and
1996 to statistical and conceptual analyses. Shows the
“measures” used by the compilers of the tables to be
problematic in a number of technical respects. Shows that
the number of underlying variables is largely reducible to a
single factor which discriminates between pre-1992 and
post-1992 universities. Casts serious doubt on the validity
of the tables from both technical and conceptual perspec-
tives.
The author is grateful to Anne Machung and
George Brown for drawing his attention to various
American writings on the ranking of universities
and colleges, to Liz Haslam for contributing
insights that have been incorporated in Table VI,
and to the anonymous reviewers of an earlier
version of this paper for their helpful comments.
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