Best in the world

WHILE university education in Britain appears to be in turmoil over fees, teaching standards, results and overall effectiveness, an international assessment of its performance suggests that it leads the world. For the second year in succession the QS World University Rankings name Cambridge as the best university in the world and place three others in the top ten -- Oxford fifth, Imperial College London sixth, and University College London seventh. That is a highly creditable result especially since in numbers American universities overwhelm British institutions. As last year, the top ranking was a close fight between Cambridge and America's Harvard with the British university getting it by a narrow margin. The head of the research on which these QS rankings are based said: “Cambridge's superior student/faculty ratio helped tip the balance. Individual attention is one of the key attractions of the Oxbridge traditions.” That comment is an interesting and even surprising endorsement of the long-established Oxford and Cambridge tutorial system by which undergraduates get regular one-on-one tutorials with their professors. There have been suggestions that the labour intensive and costly system was in disrepair but the outcome of this latest survey suggests otherwise.

The substantial increases in Britain's university fees do not come into full force until next September so it will not be for two years that their effect, if any, shows in the QS survey.