By Laura Jackson, Principal Consultant / 10 October 2024
What does it really mean to be in the middle of a university league table?
My dad is Mansfield Town football fan. Our family relationship with this team has taught me a few things about relationships with league tables, particularly around the fortunes of those who are firmly mid-table. You don’t have the excitement of being at the top with the recognition and reward this might bring, or the infamy and challenges of being at the bottom.
What’s common to both ends however is attention – and those gracing the middle aren’t getting any.
If anything, you’re reliant on a good cup run to even get a sniff at TV coverage, otherwise it’s finding your way to ITV4 on Saturday evening for a hope of 15 seconds of the action.
As we enter the new academic year, and another round of league table publications (most recently in the Guardian in September 2024), it got me thinking – what does it really mean to be in the middle of a university league table?
The data tells a story…somewhat
And where better place to start than with the data. I had a look at the Complete University Guide (CUG) published in May this year and looked at the overall scores for universities. The institution that came top had an overall score of 100%, the one at the bottom scored 32% - so a marked difference of 68 percentage points between top and bottom.
However, looking in the middle range (places 50-70), the gap is much smaller – the institution in place 50 scored 66%, whereas in place 70 it was 62% - only 4 percentage points different. Whilst I understand that league tables are subjective, and everyone has their own importance to place on them and their component parts – it is difficult to see the value of differentiating so many institutions in such small increments.
It was a similar story in the Guardian. Whilst the gap between top and bottom institutions measured at 71 points, the gap between place 50 and place 70 (well equal 68th to be precise) was only 5 points.
The midfielders
So what about those middle institutions – what tale do they have to tell about their success?
The 2025 CUG rankings has 130 institutions and two institutions at equal 65th place. What does ranking 65th tell us about these institutions? Well, the University of Plymouth’s website details a lot of interesting information about their successes:
TEF Gold award holders,
THE Impact Ratings – top 5 for life below water and top 3 for Zero Hunger,
2nd Carbon neutral University in the UK, and
3 Queen’s Anniversary Prizes.
Now I didn’t even know we had one carbon neutral university in the UK, let alone two (LSE was the first if you were wondering). Browsing Plymouth’s website evidences a lot of information about the awards and accolades they have, all of which support their civic mission and overall strategic goals – which taught me a lot more about the institution and what it stands for than their 63% overall CUG score.
It’s the same story for the University of Huddersfield – the other prestigious holder of place 65 in the CUG:
TEF Gold,
Winners of the first Global Teaching award,
Joint first for National Teaching Fellowships, and
A plethora of awards for enterprise.
Greater than the sum of its parts
So what does this tell us?
Well first of all – just like goal difference – the middle of a league table uses tiny margins to differentiate between a number of institutions, when the actual metrics are in all likelihood very similar. And the metrics don’t, of course, tell the full story. Whilst both the institutions in 65th place have TEF Gold, three in the top ten of the CUG have TEF Silver. And the range of awards and accolades out there means that everyone is best at something.
But just like that surprise appearance on Match of the Day during a good cup run, sometimes it’s worth paying attention to who is in the middle -they might just surprise you!