Funding council to investigate university league tables

Loathed by many academics, but read by all, newspaper league tables are now to be put under the spotlight by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce).

The study, announced by its chief executive, Prof David Eastwood, at the council's annual conference, will investigate the methods of the Guardian, which is due to publish its latest tables online and in the newspaper next month, as well as the Times and the Sunday Times.

Researchers will also look at whether universities are altering their policies and behaviour in efforts to climb the rankings.

There has been criticism of universities in the US for skewing admissions policies to score better in the influential US News annual rankings.

World tables compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Times Higher Education Supplement will also be surveyed. The University of Manchester, for example, has made it clear that its strategy is to climb the international rankings, which include factors like the number of Nobel prizewinners. The university has pledged to recruit five Nobel laureates in the next few years.

Prof Eastwood said league tables were now part of the higher education landscape "as one of a number of sources of information available to potential students".

He added: "Hefce has an interest in the availability of high quality useful information for students and the sector's other stakeholders. The league table methodologies are already the subject of debate and academic comment. We plan to commission up-to-date research to explore higher education league table and ranking methodologies and the underlying data, with the intention of stimulating informed discussion."

As well as questioning league table compilers, the funding council is proposing a small scale case study research of six or so institutions looking at how they use the tables and the impact they have. Do the tables affect the policies of the governing body and executive? The impact on collaborative relationships with other institutions, performance reward systems, as well as marketing, admissions and widening participation strategies will also be studied.