labels: World economy
Former UK polytechnics match Oxbridge in quality of research news
18 December 2008

The University of Cambridge continues to be Britain's foremost centre for research, according to the latest official rankings of the quality of university research released by the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). These are the first RAE results to be published in seven years.

This assessment measures the excellence of academic research and influences how £1.5billion a year of research funding will be channeled. For this reason, it is an influential force in British academia.

For performance across all departments, the University of Cambridge continues to dominate as Britain's foremost centre for research with seven in ten (71 per cent) of its academics whose research was examined by panels of experts were in departments rated as "world leading" or "internationally excellent".

The London School of Economics takes second place, relegating University of Oxford to the third spot. Imperial College, London, is fourth.

The new rankings will influence funding up to, and including, 2013.

The RAE's assessment is the result of the considerations of 1,100 experts drawn from academia and industry, sitting on 67 specialist panels. The panels assessed the quality of 200,000 pieces of work submitted by 159 research institutions published between 2001 and 2007.

Work was graded from 4* (world leading) down to 1* (nationally recognised) and 0 (not good enough to be recognised nationally).

The top eleven universities in order of merit are:

Institution Average
University of Cambridge 2.98
London School of Economics and Political Science 2.96
University of Oxford 2.96
Imperial College London 2.94
University College London 2.84
University of Manchester 2.82
University of Warwick 2.80
University of York 2.78
University of Essex 2.77
University of Edinburgh 2.75

Results show that more than half (54 per cent) of the research is of world-class quality and is in the top two grades. While 17 per cent of the research was considered to be world leading, 37 per cent was deemed to be internationally recognised.

The results, according to David Eastwood, chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, which conducts the assessments, confirmed that Britain was a leading member of research nations.

Experts opine that a valuable aspect of the RAE is that it uncovers pockets of excellence in all types of universities. While institutions such as The London School of Economics, predictably enough, dominate their area of specialization, there are plenty of surprises.

The University of Oxford ranks joint 15th with Liverpool and Bristol for excellence in physics. Imperial, a famed institution for science, tops the history section for its work on the history of science.

The University of Portsmouth, a former polytechnic, comes fifth for applied mathematics.

In English, De Montfort University, formerly Leicester Polytechnic, comes joint tenth with Cambridge and ranks only slightly lower than Oxford.


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Former UK polytechnics match Oxbridge in quality of research