Student Experience SurveyFrom Times Higher Education, the top ten British universities from the students' viewpoint.1.   Dundee2.   Loughborough3    Sheffield4.   Oxford5.   Cambridge6.   East Anglia7.   Southampton8.   Aberystwyth9.   Glasgow10.  Leeds

Thomson Reuters in Trouble? The online financial newsletter StreetAuthority has published a list of 12 companies that are at risk because of a looming debt problem.Among them is Thomson Reuters who, among other things, run the Web of Science database and provide the data for the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Their data is also used by Shanghai Jiao Tong University's rankings

LSE overtakes Oxford in British RankingThe Complete University Guide has just published its rankings of British universities. According to Brendan O'Malley in University World News.It is the first time since 2000 that Oxford and Cambridge have not shared the top two spots – in that year Imperial College London knocked Oxford into third place.In separate listings for the leading universities and

London Met UpdateIt seems that the proposal to ban alchohol from one campus was not quite what was reported. Apparently the vice-chancellor was looking for an excuse to save money. The latest report is that Muslim students are disassociating themselves from his plan.

Another Quality Initiative Every so often education bureaucrats come up with bright ideas to boost quality and raise standards and proclaim their faith that students and teachers at all levels can perform as well as anybody anywhere. A recent example is the decree by the the Director General of Higher Education at the Indonesian Education and Culture Ministry, that in order to graduate

QS Paper Here are the links to a paper and presentation slides by Ben Sowter of QS that discusses the spin-offs: subject, regional and best student city rankings.

What about the Kindergarten Rankings?US News will be publishing the Best High Schools rankings on May 1st.

Does Not ComputeLondon Metropolitan University seems to be getting rather desperate in its attempts to attract students. On the one hand:"A London university is considering establishing alcohol-free zones on its campuses because so many of its students consider drinking to be immoral.Professor Malcolm Gillies, vice-chancellor of London Metropolitan University, said the selling of alcohol was an

Opening the Black BoxI have just seen an article by Mu-Hsuang Huan of National Taiwan University published by Research Evaluation, an Oxford University Press journal. Here is the abstract:"In the era of globalization, the trend of university rankings gradually shifts from country-wide analyses to world-wide analyses. Relatively high analytical weightings on reputational

The Euro-RankingsThe U-Multirank project has slowly crept past the feasibility study stage. While any attempt to undermine the triopoly of the big three global rankers, ARWU (Shanghai), QS, Times Higher Education, is welcome, it does seem to be taking a long time. One wonders whether it will get going before the Eurozone disintegrates. Still the project does have its defenders."Jordi Curell,

The Ranking BusinessIn INSIDE HIGHER ED, Kris Olds comments on the growing commercialisation of university rankings.

US Faculty Salaries The Chronicle of Higher Education features a report from the AAUP on faculty salaries, along with data on student faculty ratio. Predictably, Harvard, where the average fill professors gets $198,000 per annum, is at the top.If anyone ever has the time, it ought to be  possible to work out the productivity of faculty with regard to publications, citations , students taught and

News from AustraliaThere is now a website MyUniversity that allows anyone to compare Australian public universities for  attributes such as staff qualifications, student to staff ratio, graduate employment and so on.Of course, the value of the site will be little better than the quality of the information uploaded. Perhaps someone could take a look at the site and see how accurate the data

Ranking News: QS World University  RankingsLike many others, I have just received an invitation to take in the QS academic survey which contributes 40 per cent to their World University Rankings. If I understand it correctly, QS now get the majority of their respondents from the Mardev mailing lists. That means that subscribing to an academic journal is sufficient qualification to rank the

Ranking News: US NewsRobert Morse has announced that US News has begun to collect data for the 2013 US college rankings."We recently started collecting the statistical data that will be used for the 2013 edition of our college rankings, which will be published later this year. Data collection for the three U.S. News statistical surveys—the main one, financial aid, and finance—began on March