Talk:Thames Valley University

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[edit] Ranking in League Table

I hope you don't object if I query the inclusion of a League Table ranking. To me, this appears to be a harmful and unuseful precedent. Unlike the statistics in the box it accompanies, league table rankings are not discrete, unquestionable and universal values. They are merely, as evidenced in their only ever appearing in national newspapers, and their being taken with a pinch of salt even by the QAA, little more than numeric translations of one particular body's opinion: subject to that newspaper's criteria and own opinion of what constitutes aptitude in an educational institution. Nor do I see 'League Table' in any other relevant University article. For now I shall omit it, with the included paragraph already more than formidable an indicator of the 'quality' wrangles that have clearly affected TVA over the past decade.

Low league table ranking

I taught at TVU for 7 years. It fully deserves it's extremely low league table ranking. Many of the students were sub-literate and the staff had to constantly struggle to teach them basic language skills, oral and written and that's even before getting onto the substantive course (which in my case was the LLB). Managment structures and communication were very poor.

The criteria for University league tables are transparent and it's extremely disingenuous to suggest that the position attained is down to subjective opinion. It so obviously is not. I would not be surprised if the author is a member of so called management given that they were in denial about the real probems afflicting this so called university and that denial appears to remain to this day.

I attended a proper university (ie not a former polytechnic) and so am qualified to make a comparison between a University and what TVU has become. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lennonmccartney (talk • contribs) 14:32, 6 May 2007.

Most, and perhaps all, university articles I've seen on here include a mention of where the university has been placed in league tables. The person who originally raised this question suggested that including the league table positions would be harmful. Harmful to TVU? Well, wikipedia doesn't exist to protect TVU!

League tables are generally speaking pretty accurate as rough guides to how good a university is. I'm just looking at the current Times Good University Guide table. Oxford comes top, followed by Cambridge just 27 points below. Then we drop 95 points to Imperial in third place. Then LSE and UCL. Loughborough in sixth place is a bit of a surprise, but it's been doing well for some time now. Manchester in 26th position and Birmingham in 33rd seem unreasonably low, but generally the order seems to be what I expected. Around the middle of the table the old universities give way to the post-1992 universities, with well-known successes like Oxford Brookes and Northumbria leading the way. Luton and Thames Valley round off the table at 108th and 109th respectively. I should say this was a fairly good snapshot of the state of British universities.--Oxonian2006 16:05, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Accommodation

"there was no student accommodation until 2007" this is not true, accomodation at the Reading campus has been available prior to this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 3dom (talk • contribs) 00:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC).

Corrected, via the magic of the wiki. — mholland 03:07, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] University ratings

(I'm posting this to all articles on UK universities as so far discussion hasn't really taken off on Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities.)

There needs to be a broader convention about which university rankings to include in articles. Currently it seems most pages are listing primarily those that show the institution at its best (or worst in a few cases). See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities#University ratings. Timrollpickering 23:33, 21 December 2006 (UTC)