So Close: Imperial at THE Awards
Close but not cigar for Imperial. It's an honour just to be nominated, right?
Imperial College was nominated for two Times Higher Education Awards this year: Most Improved Student Experience and Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers. Imperial however lost out in each category, losing to the University of Chester and the University of York respectively. The nominations; particularly for ‘Most Improved Student Experience’ ought to be good news for Imperial that has lagged behind other universities in student satisfaction ratings which has contributed to disappointing Guardian Rankings in recent years. (It came in 13th in the 2013 rankings behind the University of Bath, The University of Essex and perhaps most disturbingly, UCL).
The awards that aim to “recognize excellence and reward extraordinary innovation, talent and imagination of UK higher education” were initiated in 2007. Judging was carried out “by a distinguished panel of experts” that included Sir Deian Hopkin, President of the National Library of Wales and Liam Burns, President of the National Union of Students. Universities that do not traditionally top the League Tables have dominated the Awards; it indicates perhaps a degree of complacency among the ‘more prestigious’ institutions. Imperial has however won awards for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Innovation and Technology’ in 2009 and for Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers in 2008
Times Higher Education currently ranks Imperial 8th in the world putting it in a league with MIT and Stamford and a couple of places ahead of Yale and Columbia (but a mere 49 places ahead of King’s College London). The rankings have however been criticized for the importance given to citations in calculating its rankings which has lead to a sidelining of universities whose language of instruction isn’t English. Imperial currently ranks among the Top 10 universities in the world among most major surveys including the QS Rankings and THE.
