AN INDEPENDENT report recently issued by the Higher Education Funding Council for England is warning both students and employers to be sceptical about what they read in the press about ‘good’and ‘bad’universities.

Whereas public sector institutions such as hospitals, the police and schools fall under State-directed league table scrutiny, it is the media that carries the Olympic torch when it comes to rating, praising and slating the country’s universities.

HEFCE’s chief executive Prof David Eastwood prefaces the report by describing the annual league tables published by the likes of The Sunday Times, Times and Guardian, and Times Higher Education as ‘part of the higher education landscape and the newspaper calendar”.