The Times/The Times Higher Education Supplement --League Tables in Britain: An Insider's View

The Times has been a pioneer in the publication of university league tables in the United Kingdom as an aid to the application process for young people seeking to select the most appropriate course programmes and institutions. It published its unified league table for the first time in 1993. The Times Higher Education Supplement, a weekly newspaper under the same ownership, has complemented The Times operation by publishing simultaneously the data on which The Times ranking is based. These data are intended specifically for consumption by a readership drawn from among academics and administrators in the universities and other higher education institutions of the country. The underlying philosophy of The Times/The Times Higher Education Supplement operation is to reflect the greatest degree of objectivity using publicly available and verifiable data as proxies for measures of performance across a range of criteria. The methodology is subject to continuous review in consultation with the universities.