News

Newspaper league tables

(12 May 2003)

Durham is back in The Times Top 10, up from 13th last year, in the latest national newspaper league table of universities, and heads the subject specific tables for Geography, and Physics and Astronomy.

The rise in The Times rankings reflects increases in several of the paper's measures: entry grades, teaching score, spending on libraries, computing and student facilities, student-staff ratio and the proportion of Firsts and Upper second class degrees. Durham was last ranked in The Times top 10 in 1997 at 9th and misses out on ninth place this year by only 0.1 of a percentage point behind Bristol.

The subject lists combine teaching quality ratings with research assessment exercise results, entry grades and graduate employment. Durham is ranked:

Anthropology 5	Sport (Hospitality, leisure, recreation, sport & tourism) 10
Archaeology 5=	Iberian languages (Spanish) 33=
Business Studies 42	Italian 23
Chemistry 3	Law 4
Classics and Ancient History 15	Linguistics 4
Computer Science 24	Mathematics 26
East and South Asian Studies 9	Middle Eastern and African Studies 4
Economics 7	Molecular biosciences 6
Education 19	Music 5
English 5	Organismal biosciences 4=
French 5	Other subjects allied to medicine 35
General Engineering 5	Physics and Astronomy 1=
Geography 1	Politics 37
Geology 7	Psychology 15
German 7	Sociology 20
History 3	Theology and religious studies 7

Website: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,716,00.html

The Times table is based on nine key criteria which have a close bearing on the undergraduates experience. At the weekend the annual Financial Times table of universities again placed Durham at 28th in a much broader survey that attempts to measure a more complex range of factors. It no longer publishes overall "scores", but in previous years the universities have been separated by only fractions of a point.