US mania for ranking colleges arrives in Britain

Bruce Hunter hates college rankings. Every fall, the chief college counselor at Rowland Hall-St. Mark's - a private high school in Salt Lake City - stands before his students and tears the ranking pages from his college handbooks.

"Pretentious, money-grabbing nonsense," he says of these publications. "These things do much harm because they don't know the colleges, and their ratings are meaningless. "

Thousands of miles away in Edinburgh, Scotland, Robin McAlpine, a senior official for Universities Scotland - an association of Scottish universities - expresses a similar sentiment.

"League tables [a term borrowed from British sports referring to soccer standings] are not about giving information to parents and students, they are about selling newspapers," he fumes. "Loads of people rush out to buy them when they come out, especially middle-class students. But they are [a] gimmick."

The annual ranking ritual that has been the norm for more than a decade in America is now creeping into Britain. From hospitals to sports to education, competitive lists are captivating Britons much as they gripped their American cousins. Everyone wants his favorite soccer team to be first, and parents want their children at the top university.

The Guardian, the Times, the Sunday Times, the Times Higher Educational Supplement, the Financial Times, and Manchester University Careers Service - the list of publications coming out with their own university "league tables" continues to grow and so does the controversy surrounding them.

Many in higher education now envisage a larger role for the ranking industry, possibly along the lines of the US experience.

As the founding dean of the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and now the head of England's Warwick University, Prof. David Vandelinde, has had experience administering universities in both countries. He says rankings are facts of life in Britain as in America.

"If [these lists] provide useful data, then they are helpful to students and their parents," he says. "On the other hand they can distort information. But I think more people in the UK will pay attention to ranking, because there is more focus on higher education and the growing diversity in British education system."

Education editors insist that despite what the critics say, the rankings provide useful information to students, many of whom are graduating with increasing level of debts.

Average university tuition in Britain today is about £1,000 (US$1,650). However, that amount will triple in the fall of 2006, due to the Higher Education Bill recently passed by Parliament.

A recent study projects that the average British student who goes all the way through university paying the higher tuition will graduate with a debt of about $35,000.

Page: 1 | 2