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Cambridge outruns Oxford in research rankings
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-18 20:55 LONDON -- Cambridge has beaten Oxford in the race to become Britain's top research university, a much-anticipated evaluation of academic work published on Thursday showed.
Cambridge, Oxford, the London School of Economics and Imperial College London topped the evaluation to decide how 1.5 billion pounds in government funding for academic research will be spent. But reports also said the research revealed for the first that some of the best universities have large numbers of low-performing researchers. And some of the least-prestigious universities, including the media studies department at a former polytechnic, are among the top-rated academic centres in Britain. In the first Research Assessment Exercise published in seven years, the University of Cambridge nudged ahead of Oxford with the highest proportion of outstanding research. Every university submits a dossier of its best research work in up to 67 areas which are then graded and ranked by panels headed by the country's best academics. One senior university official described the process as "bitchier than backstage at a beauty pageant," the Guardian said. But the process is crucial for determining the allocation of annual funding for the next five years. Twenty-four of the institutions had at least 40 percent of all of their submissions rated as "world leading," David Eastwood, chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England said. "This represents an outstanding achievement, confirming that the UK is among the top rank of research powers in the world," he said. Some 200,000 pieces of work published between 2001 and 2007 were submitted by 159 universities. Among the biggest movers, York rose to eighth place from 16th seven years ago and Edinburgh from 14th to tenth while Queen Mary, University of London climbed to 11th from 43. Cambridge topped the table with 71 percent of its academics submitting research rated as "world leading" or "internationally excellent" compared with 70 percent for Oxford. But researchers are also conducting low-ranking work at some of the top universities. Close to one third of research by the top six universities was given the lowest two stars, according to the Guardian, compared to four stars which is considered "world leading." However, 60 percent of the research by the School of Media Arts and Design at Westminster University, formerly the Polytechnic of Central London, was rated "world leading" by the study, the Times said. |
