Oxford University is pushed into fourth place, beaten not just by Cambridge and Warwick, which are at least in the Russell Group, but also by York and Loughborough. The proud London School of Economics doesn't even make the top ten. It has to share eleventh place with, of all places, the Open University. Leeds University is one of the 19 elite Russell Group institutions, and therefore likes to think of itself as out of the top drawer, but it comes in at number 61. Its humiliation is compounded by the fact that it comes below no less than 13 of the new universities, or jumped up polys as they are known in Russell Group circles, and by two institutions of higher education.
Many new universities do remarkably well.
Northumbria - get into the top ten. And in the top 20 there's even a university college, Canterbury Christ Church, at number 17. But perhaps the most startling thing about the league table is the way in which old universities are regularly hammered by the new university or university college with which they share a city. UWE is sixth, but Bristol, a Russell Group institution, cannot do better than 32. Sussex at 33, while Leeds Metropolitan University, at 55, is six places higher than Leeds University.