Statistics on Higher Education

Quality and Standards

Quality of education is difficult to discuss generally; in the case of individual institutions and programmes it is often best to refer to the most recent study undertaken by the Quality Assurance Agency of any given subject in any given institution; all of which can be found indexed by both subject and institution at the QAA’s own website where they can be downloaded in PDF format: www.qaa.ac.uk/reviews/

RAE 2008 (www.rae.ac.uk/) is the sixth in a series of exercises conducted nationally to assess the quality of UK research and to inform the selective distribution of public funds for research by the four UK higher education funding bodies.

Universities are subject to many rules and procedures governing their admission, structure and funding. The Report of the Committee of National Inquiry (chaired by Sir Ron Dearing), argued in 1997 that higher education institutions needed to be ‘’explicit and clear in how it goes about its business, be accountable to students and to society, and seek continuously to improve its own performance’.

As HEFCE’s diagram on the key strategic challenges for HEIs in the next 5 years demonstrates, universities are not only education providers, but expected to be responsible employers, socially responsible, coherent and efficient managers and stakeholders in the business process.

Yet, the Treasury-commissioned Lambert Review in 2003 criticised the government’s approach to HE: ‘Universities are struggling with an uncoordinated and often unnecessarily burdensome system of accountability and regulation’.

Yet it appears to advocate the introduction of a quasi-differential market in higher education provision
   ‘Two ideas are put forward to address this problem. The first is that the use of hypothecated funding streams should be kept to a minimum. The second is that universities which can show they are well run should be subject to a much lighter regulatory and accountability regime than those which cannot.’

Figure 1

Figure 2

Despite concerns about high drop out rates in UK universities, the OECD Report shows that the UK fares relatively well in comparison to other OECD Countries. Over 80% of UK Students survive the duration of their university course, compared to less than 50% in Sweden and Italy.

What is important to note is that the UK ranks second from top among the completion rates, and some 14% higher than the OECD average, when compared with its OECD counterparts and substantially more favourably when compared with its European partners—although this second comparison is skewed by Italy’s dramatic rate of attrition.

Dropping-out does not necessarily mean failure – as students may change career aspirations, or simply arrive at university and not like their course and new surroundings.

The Academic Rankings of World Universities 2005, complied by the Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, lists 11 British Universities amongst the top 100 in the world, covering indicators such as research output and the quality of faculty – the number of staff in a given institution awarded Nobel Prizes or Field Medals.

The Eleven UK Universities featured are:

Further information is available at:
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2005/ARWU2005_Top100.htm

The recently published THES World University Rankings 2006 lists four British Universities in the top 20: the University of Cambridge (2), Oxford University (3), Imperial College London (9) and the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (17) the American Ivy League continues to dominate the higher echelons.

The full table can be accessed at www.thes.co.uk (subscription or free trial available).

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