So it is with some trepidation that Guardian Education presents its own rankings. But they do differ in important respects. Secondly, we have focused on teaching and learning rather than research. One effect of the Research Assessment Exercise has been to concentrate the minds and energies of academics on research ratings at the expense of the attention lavished on teaching - which is, after all, any university's core function. This is something the funding councils are keen to address but until money and prestige flow from judgments on teaching as well as research they are unlikely to make much progress.
Good teaching is easy to recognise but hard to measure.
The tables that follow today and in future weeks make no claims to be the last word in that respect. One effect of focusing on teaching has been to demonstrate strengths in the new universities which have tended to be overlooked in institutional leagues. Originally, we hoped to include the results of an opinion survey of heads of departments - this will not now be used in our tables this year. One department head complained that a mediocre report five years ago had remained a millstone, even though two thirds of the staff had changed and the department been completely overhauled. He is certainly not alone.