What are the UK ranking systems, and I should I follow them?
There is no "best university" ranking system to follow. Different rankings measure different things. However, The QS World University Ranking and The Best Global University Ranking have become very popular recently in many places.
University rankings have only relatively recently become popular - before 2006 very few people used them outside of the United States. They have become so popular because they seem to make things easier. They make it very simple to compare universities nationally and globally. In the UK most people use The Complete University Guide, The Guardian, and The Good University Guide rankings. For global rankings the World University Guide, The Academic Ranking of World Universities, The QS World University Rankings, and the Best Global Universities Ranking are popular.
The rankings guides offer a quick and easy way to see how universities compare against others. However, they all use different ways and measure differently in order to see who comes first and who comes last. For example, The QS World University Rankings measures the following:
- Academic Reputation – 40%;
- Employee Reputation – 10%;
- Faculty Student Ratio – 20%;
- Citations per Faculty – 20%;
- International Faculty – 5%;
- International Student Ratio – 5%.
As a measure of what other universities think about other universities and how many academic papers the Professors have published, it is very useful information. In the UK The Guardian Ranking measures different things, including
- Entry Scores – 17%;
- Feedback – 17%;
- Job Prospects – 17%;
- Spending per-student – 17%;
- Staff student ratio – 17%;
- Teaching Quality – 17%;
- Value Added – 17%.
Measuring different things, the QS Rankings and the Guardian Rankings arrive at very different scores for the same university. This is one of the main problems with rankings they rank what they measure and they measure things where the information can be easily collected. What does this mean for students, staff, agents, universities? A university ranking may help a university to become better known as it makes it easier and simpler to get noticed but it will not help students decide which is a good university for them to go to.
The answer, for all intents and purposes is that with your student you should focus on their goals and life plans and choose the university that is right for them.