Introduction
Every year universities in the United Kingdom have to be ranked. The rankings are therefore published in magazines which include the Times, The Sunday Times the guardian among other national magazines. Rankings of universities in the UK are based on different criteria with a primary aim of helping applicants who need to study there. There exists a number of criteria which is used for ranking Universities in the UK. They can be outlined as below;
Cut off entry points, Facilities and services available for student use in the university, their research quality, the ratio of students to staff, student destinations among other criteria.
History
To match the criteria it is important to look at the different annual ranking magazines for Universities in the UK.
The complete university guide
In the former days it was referred to as the good University Guide which is published in association with the independent since 2008.this magazine is based on the following nine criteria;
Features
• A measure of staff to student ratio aimed at determining staffing level
• University entry standards for new students under 21 years
• Academic services spend by a student
• A measure of student completion rate
• The proportion of first and upper class honors
• Graduates prospects i.e. their employability after graduation
• Student satisfaction
• Research quality assessment
• The spenditure by student and staff.
Tips and comments
Below is a top ten ranking which was done recently for universities in the UK based on the above criteria
• university Cambridge
• university of oxford
• the imperial college of London
• the London school of economics
• Durham university
• university of st Andrews
• University college London
• University of Warwick
• University of Lancaster and
• the University of Bath
The guardian magazine used eight number of criteria to do the ranking of universities in the united Kingdom, which is as follows; entry points, final year overall quality, feed back by graduates, spending per student, the quality of teaching, job prospects and staff student ratio. The guardian came up with the listed the following as the top ten universities in the UK basing on the above criteria. university Cambridge, university of oxford, university of st Andrews, the London school of economics, University college London, University of Warwick, Durham university, ,University of Lancaster, lough Borough university and the imperial college of London.
Moreover, the times and the Sunday times magazines also used criteria based on eight variables and came up with the lists showing the best ten universities. The rankings were similar to the other magazines concerning the top universities in the UK.
Conversely it has been argued that, some universities with a good ranking in the UK may be ranked low internationally and some with low ranking in the UK may be ranked high in the international market.
This could be so because international ranking is based on different criteria as opposed to the Uk criteria of ranking.
The ranking of universities in the UK has faced some criticism because of efforts to combine different rankings for instance research quality, the quality of teaching and other factors such as student satisfaction.
