Comparing University League Tables

Today's Viz of the Day http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/gallery/more-net-costs by Jon Boeckenstedt of Higher Ed Data Stories, which shows the relative costs of US university tuition, got me thinking about doing a viz on UK universities. Since they all basically charge the same price I was going to have to look at something other than fees (though there is a rather sad story in the trend for increasing UK tuition fees overall, perhaps a story for another day).

Here's the viz:

The main story is that at the very top end of the tables, both newspapers are in complete agreement with each other - Cambridge, Oxford, LSE and St Andrews making up the top 4 for both. After that, the two begin to differ leading to a maximum ranking difference of some 43 places for Anglia Ruskin University.

Creating the composite rank was fairly straightforward using Tableau's new RANK function in version 8.1. I simply averaged the two ranks, and then ranked that average! A note on ranking styles - The Guardian uses 'competition ranking' (e.g. 1,2,2,4) where as The Sunday Times ranks are unique. For the composite rank I used competition ranking.

PS - do you believe for one second that St Andrews should be above UCL? Treasonous if you ask me.