At Home with Phil Baty

Chair Number 4
(Photo by Ryan Riggins on Unsplash)

Early evening in the Baty household. Phil is busy rooting through the kitchen cupboards. Mrs Baty comes in. 

Mrs Baty: Phil, what are you doing? And why are all these tins of soup all over the floor?
Phil: I'm ranking.
Mrs Baty: I beg your pardon?
Phil: I'm ranking. With an R. It was complete chaos in the soup cupboard. I couldn't tell which was the most popular soup flavour. I've done a serious, robust qualitative study of all respondents (n=1), and I'm delighted to announce the winner of the inaugural Times Higher Soup Rankings. Cream of Tomato is at number 1 with 100% of the allocated soup points.

'No Amount of Aromatic Spice Poppadoms Will Hold Us Back'

Phileas Fogg: FTU 'invested heavily'

Here at Fundermental Towers University we've always strived to be the very best small university. Throughout our great and glorious history, stretching back for more than a quarter of a decade, we've nurtured a forward thinking, imaginative ethos that has served our students well.

Not only have we linked with similar small-scale centres of excellence in the wider Rochester area to form the R2D2 Consortium, but we have also launched the prestigious Latitude Prize to seek answers to the most pointless and irrelevant questions of our time. We've even sought to rename both our office holders and the institution itself. I do not wish to appear self-aggrandising, but I would suggest that we are probably the finest small university in the world.

Meanwhile, in Moscow Airport...

Call me paranoid, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed the uncanny resemblance between the recent photos of Enemy of the State/Champion of the People (depending on your point of view), Edward Snowden, and the Times Higher Editor at Large/Rankings Editor (depending on your point of view), Phil Baty.

Was it just that they wanted to save costs by sharing a photo shoot? Did they both get the same PR advisor telling them to look serious, quizzical and suspicious at the camera? Did they both, for whatever reason, happen to end up in the transit area of Moscow Airport at the same time? Or are they, in fact, one and the same person?

We, the people, have a right to know. We should be told. I'm off to picket the American Embassy, on the basis that they must have had a hand in all of this.

Who's with me? Anyone..? You, at the back..?

Snowden

Baty

'Almost Everybody Can Score Well in Something'

Alex Miles alerted me to the wonderful University Ranking Watch, a blog that feverishly follows the various league tables for universities around the world. It makes fascinating but, frankly, bewildering reading. After only a few minutes you begin to realise that there is a league table for everyone, and if you're bottom of one and want to bolster your ego, you just need to find another methodology/data set/satisfaction survey.

So, if you're not making the cut in terms of teaching or research quality, you can always have a look instead at 'university sustainability', or 'productivity', or even 'student sex'. As the blog admits (about 'subject rankings'), 'the methodology and weighting varies...so that almost everybody can score well in something.'

However, he seems to have overlooked the latest league table, recently highlighted by Phil Baty: 'the UK Olympian University Ranking'. If you've been waiting for the day when you'd see St Mary's University College Twickenham in the top 10, your time has come.