For many in higher education, good performance is measured in term of reputation, either for a department as a whole or for individuals. Often this is informal (and therefore almost entirely beyond the capacity of a governing board to deal with), but in the area of research it may be based on specific indicators such as research grant income (although this is very discipline specific), the citation of papers, patents, and so on. It is such indicators that allow the RAE to operate, and to serve as a (controversial) proxy for quality. However, for teaching reputational indicators of performance are much weaker, although boards should receive QAA and other quality reports.
It is because of such difficulties that 'league tables' seem to hold initial attractions for some governors, but they are fraught with difficulties as serious measures of performance. Newspaper league tables are assumed by many outsiders to higher education to be a fair picture of comparative performance. In fact they can be extremely misleading and use different methodologies. The main UK league tables are produced by the Times, the Guardian and the Independent. The two international rankings followed in the UK are the (now disbanded) THE-QS World University Rankings and the Academic Rankings of World Universities (ARWU) from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The THE is no longer working with QS and is seeking a new methodology for the rankings.
Without very close analysis governors should never take league table position as a performance indicator, because:
However, league tables are here to stay - no matter how misleading - because they sell newspapers. Therefore, despite methodological concerns, institutions know that the general public in the UK and overseas gives considerable credence to league table rankings. Governors will therefore wish to know where their own institution appears on a list and what the reasons are for any 'poor' scores. If these reasons are the result of an alternative emphasis in the strategies that their institution has adopted, governors should not be concerned.
The introduction of increased student fees in England adds a further dimension to the power of league tables as a factor in influencing student - and parental - choice of institution.