Why Uni league tables are boring and pointless

Is your life devoid of meaning? Are you looking for a way to assert your identity? Fear not, the University rankings are out to grab the headlines from Islamic State and Ukraine.

The latest pointless list has been released by The Times, bringing much-needed reassurance to those who were desperate for clarification on which Universities are reputable, thinking they might walk into the University of East London believing it to be the fountain of all knowledge.

What purpose do these irksome lists serve other than to fuel fifteen-page threads on the eternally lame Student Room and allow the poor insecure souls on campus to start conversations with ‘did you know our Uni’s in the top five for…’ before being roundly ignored? The answer – they’re almost entirely meaningless.

A sign of The Times

Who actually chooses their University based on a league table? Who sits there studying their newspaper thinking ‘Holy Mother of God, Surrey is up twenty on their position last year, I better go there because they’re in form?’

Most actually visit the Universities they’re considering and decide whether they like the atmosphere rather than having emotional breakdowns over nebulous terms like ‘student satisfaction’ and ‘entry tariff requirements’.

Seriously, none of it matters. Everybody knows the order goes roughly like this: Oxbridge, the rest of the Russell Group, followed by everyone else. It doesn’t matter if the Guardian wants to place the University of Crewe in the top five because they held a festival celebrating radical feminism in Costa Rica. Nothing is going to alter this hierarchy in the public imagination barring some catastrophic event like Wayne Rooney being appointed Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge.

We’re always no.1

And how the hell do you know which league table to believe? There are millions which are always contradicting each other. Global rankings, national rankings…I’m surprised there hasn’t been a ‘league table of University league tables’ published yet.

In fact, why stop at Universities? Why not rank individual lecturers, librarians, admin staff, maybe even Uni security teams’ ‘hardman’ rating? It’s such a peculiar obsession – ordering things simply to provide an opportunity for the morons of the student populace to scream ‘LOOK I’M VERY SLIGHTLY BETTER THAN SOMEBODY ELSE!’.

I’d only be interested if the stakes were much, much higher – if there was a relegation zone, for instance. Let’s say if your University is in the bottom ten your funding is slashed so harshly you have to employ the likes of White Dee to lecture in Sociology, Chico from X Factor for Music, Joey Barton for Philosophy and the ‘bigoted old woman’ who derailed Brown’s election campaign to teach Politics. Your lecture theatres are demolished and you have to be taught in desolate fields strewn with litter. Meanwhile, the winning University is awarded millions of pounds to build a giant North Korean-style statue in honour of its Vice-Chancellor.

The relegation zone would be terrifying

Until then, I want a ban on these ludicrous lists. They’re dire to read, make little difference to how Universities are perceived and simply fuel the delusions of those who believe anybody cares whether their University is in the top ten for their subject.

Let’s bring all students together and start a much-needed violent revolution against these loathsome league tables.