 |
 |
Dear colleague,
Please see below an email from The Times & Sunday Times Good University Guide which relates to the methodology
of the tables.
If you have any queries
related to the correspondence below, please contact Alastair McCall -
[log in to unmask]
Regards
Jovan
Jovan Luzajic
Senior Policy Analyst
Universities UK
Direct Tel +44 (0)20 7419 5474
Web
www.UniversitiesUK.ac.uk
Follow us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/UniversitiesUK
Universities for Europe
– sign up
here
to receive updates on the campaign to promote the benefits of EU membership
|
|
|
|
Dear Colleagues
The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2016
If you have any queries to the correspondence below, please send to
This is to provide you with an update on decisions we have made regarding the methodology
of The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2016.
At the outset, I would like to thank those institutions who have already responded
to our request for the mapping of REF units of assessment to the Guide’s subject tables. There are a few HEIs yet to respond, so can I remind colleagues that we have asked for a response by today, May 29, to the compilers at [log in to unmask] This
has been sent and received within your organisation in the past three weeks. We will, of course, continue to take on board any responses received in the next few days.
Each year we are fortunate to have significant input from experienced colleagues from
right across the HE sector through our Review Group, and this year that has been of particular benefit as we look to incorporate the REF results and more generally take stock of other potential changes. Whilst the decisions on any changes ultimately rest
with the editorial team at The Sunday Times and The Times, we do pay close heed to the views expressed in the Review Group.
As a general presumption we only make changes where there is a clear case for doing
so. Some degree of fluidity in the rankings is to be expected as the performance of HEIs relative to each other fluctuates, but our intention is to make as small a number of changes to the methodology as possible over time.
Four of the eight indicators see no change in methodology this year: entry standards,
completion, good honours and graduate prospects.
Of the remainder, the following changes will be made from this year's edition of the
Guide:
1) and 2) The student:staff ratio and services & facilities spend indicators see a
minor change which is that, for both, we will now assume a FTE of 0.2 for students overseas, on placement or work experience (previously this was 0.5) to better reflect the relative ‘load’ on the university and also the fees received. This change was requested
by a number of universities at this year's Review Group.
3) Returning to research, we are continuing to review the data available to us and
as yet have not made a final decision on the precise algorithms that we will use for the research quality indicator. Again, giving us continuity from previous editions of the Guide, we will have a single research quality indicator which will have a
weighting of 1.5 in the institutional table and 1 in the subject tables. This indicator will take account of both quality as expressed through the REF grade profiles, and ‘intensity’ which will see us bring together the staff submitted data and the ‘contextual
data’ published by HESA i.e. the FTE numbers of staff who were REF-eligible. Exactly how we bring these two datasets together is to be determined, once we have fully explored the various options through data modelling.
We had been considering (as many colleagues will be aware) the use of teaching only
staff within intensity, but we have decided against that. There was an argument in favour of incorporating teaching only staff, given our REF measure aims to take account of raw quality
and the likelihood of direct exposure of potential students to the staff who generated those results, but the data quality challenges (largely to do with alignment to UoAs to our subject tables) made this inadvisable.
4) Student satisfaction will be displayed in future as two columns of data in both
the institutional and subject tables - Teaching Quality and Student Experience. The weighting for the two columns of data will remain the same as when the NSS outcomes were presented as one column of data (1.5 times in the institutional table, and 1 in the
subject tables) so the overall influence of the NSS on outcomes is unchanged. However, there will be a shift of emphasis within the measure with a weighting of 67%/33% in both institutional and subject tables in favour of Teaching Quality (the first three
sections of the NSS covering Questions 1-12) over Student Experience (the final four sections of the NSS covering Questions 13-22).
Finally, in the subject tables, we will expect to see data for at least 3 of the 4
indicators for an institution to appear. The changes to the NSS thresholds should help support the appearance of more HEIs in the subject tables. If this is not the case, we may review this further.
It is intended that the Good University Guide will be first published in The
Sunday Times on September 20, and in The Times throughout the following week, with the HarperCollins book available shortly thereafter. Any changes to that schedule will be communicated to you via UUK.
I hope that colleagues find this update useful, and can I thank you again for your
input to this year’s Guide.
If you have any queries regarding this email, please do not send them via UUK
- who have kindly agreed to distribute this correspondence on our behalf - but direct them to me at
[log in to unmask].
All the best
Alastair
--
Alastair McCall
Editor, The Sunday Times Good University Guide
This message is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient you should not copy or disclose this message to anyone but should kindly
notify the sender and delete the message. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message which do not relate to the official business of Universities UK shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it. No contracts shall be concluded by
means of this email. Neither Universities UK nor the sender accepts any responsibility for viruses and it is your responsibility to scan this email and any attachments. Universities UK reserves the right to access and disclose all messages sent over its email
system. Registered Office: Woburn House, 20 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9HQ. Registered Company in England & Wales No. 2517018 Registered Charity No. 1001127
