'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.