Universities were ranked according to measures in eight key performance areas; Student Satisfaction, Research Quality, Entry Standards, Student-Staff Ratios, Services & Facilities Spend, Completion, Good Honours and Graduate Prospects.

All sources of the raw data used in the table are in the public domain. The National Student Survey (NSS) was the source of the Student Satisfaction data. This was an initiative undertaken by the Funding Councils for England, Northern Ireland and Wales designed, as an element of the quality assurance for higher education, to inform prospective students and their advisers in choosing what and where to study. The survey encompasses the views of final year students on the quality of their courses.

The information regarding Research Quality was sourced from the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, a peer review exercise to evaluate the quality of research in UK higher education institutions undertaken by the UK higher education funding bodies. The previous Research Assessment Exercise took place in 2001. Staffing data supplied by HESA were also used to evaluate the extent to which the research ratings related to total academic staff.

Entry Standards, Student-Staff Ratios, Services & Facilities Spend, Completion, Good Honours and Graduate Prospects data were supplied by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) which provides a system of data collection, analysis, and dissemination in relation to higher education in the whole of the United Kingdom. The original sources of data for these measures are data returns made by the universities themselves to HESA.

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The provision of the data by the above sources does not necessarily imply agreement with the data transformation and construction of the table. Universities were provided with sets of their own HESA data, which form the basis of the table, in advance of publication and were offered the opportunity to check the information. Some universities supplied replacement corrected data.

In building the table, scores for Student Satisfaction and Research Quality were weighted by 1.5; all other indicators were weighted by 1. The indicators were combined using a z-score transformation and the totals were transformed to a scale with 1000 for the top score. For Entry Standards, Good Honours and Graduate Prospects the score was adjusted for subject mix.

The detailed definitions of the indicators are given below.

Student Satisfaction

The percentage of positive responses (Agree & Definitely Agree) in each of the six question areas (Teaching, Assessment & Feedback, Academic Support, Organisation & Management, Learning Resources and Personal Development) plus the Overall Satisfaction question were combined to provide a composite score and averaged over two years. For institutions where a NSS score does not exist the average of their other scores is used. Source: 2007 & 2008 National Student Survey.

Research Quality

Overall quality of research based on the new 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). The outputs of the RAE gave each institution a profile in the following categories: 4* world-leading, 3* internationally excellent and 2* internationally recognised (with another two lower categories). The Funding Bodies decided only to fund research in the higher 3 categories, and directed more funds to the very best research by applying weightings: 4* receiving 7 times the weight of 2*, and 3* receiving 3 times the weight of 2*. These weightings have been used in the tables. As an example, in the calculations used a university with 10% of its submitted research at 4* and 90% at 3* would generate an initial score of 3.4 (i.e. 0.1 x 7 + 0.9 x 3). This represents the first stage of the scoring.

Estimations of the eligible staff for each university were made drawing from publicly available data (HESA, 2007/08) that have been quality assured by universities themselves. The eligible staff data include all staff directly responsible for teaching and research (i.e. all ‘teaching and research’ staff, and all ‘teaching only’ staff). Most universities will have submitted at least some ‘research only’ staff, but many staff in that category would not have been eligible for the RAE - to address that effect ‘research only’ staff are included only if they are more senior based on salary levels. An adjustment has also been made to reflect the patterns of staffing in those institutions who carry out further education as well as higher education, with a reduction in the estimation of eligible staff pro rata to their HE student numbers.

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