| Abstract: | University league tables and rankings are produced annually in the United Kingdom by the leading "quality" newspapers using statistical data on universities and colleges published each year. The newspapers claim that the up-to-date independent measures which they provide annually on the changing quality of universities are necessary to guide students in choosing universities in which to enroll. Many, however, are skeptical about the accuracy (as opposed to the precision) of the data, where year-to-year movements in the rankings of institutions are as much artifacts of the data and their manipulation as real changes. Prospective students seem not to be strongly influenced by the annual changes in the league table position of a given institution but are influenced more strongly by competition for places and the quality of the learning environment offered by the university. |
