Benchmarking the performance of English universities

Purpose – This paper seeks to examine the effectiveness of teaching and widening participation as measures to assess, compare, and benchmark the performance of English universities. Design/methodology/approach – Uses data from a paired sample English universities to compare the effectiveness of teaching and widening participation in: research‐orientated “Russell Group” universities versus teaching‐orientated “post 1992” universities. All data were in the public domain and provided from reports of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, The Higher Education Statistics Agency and The Times Higher Education Supplement . Findings – The analysis quantified the greater academic effectiveness and academic efficiencies of post‐1992 universities compared with members of the Russell Group. These results are the complete opposite of the widely accepted position of universities in published league tables and so are likely to be controversial. Research limitations/implications – The equations used for the numerical analysis could be modified to give a different weighting to different factors and/or to include the effectiveness of research activity, and could therefore result in a different interpretation of the data. Practical implications – The introduction of variable top‐up fees in 2006 will probably lead to the Russell Group universities charging a higher monetary price. If all other factors remain unchanged, this will increase the academic and operational efficiencies of the Russell Group universities compared with the post‐1992 group. Originality/value – This is highly original analysis of existing data in the public domain and leads to controversial but logically inescapable findings.