Guardian university league table 2011

Following the rankings by the Independent and the Times (noted here and here) and my own citation ranking (available here – though completely unnoticed by the world...), the Guardian has just published its annual university league table (available here). There are some interesting differences both in the results and the methodology. The Guardian ranking is the only one of them that only aims to rank “teaching excellence”. To some extent, this may explain why some of the research-active universities are ranked poorly (e.g., Manchester just 51 out of 118). However, generally speaking, the Guardian ranking too ranks the research-active universities of the Russell Group and the 1994 Group ahead of the more teaching-focussed universities of the Million+ Group. A likely explanation is that some of the Guardian’s teaching variables actually proxy for research quality, for instance, entry standards and job prospects clearly do depend on what the public regards as “good universities” – and these are typically the research-active ones.