University league tables

There is an interesting article by John Walshe, the Irish education journalist, on the increasing obsession with university league tables & an OECD report on the subject, link below. Personally, I am pretty skeptical about these tables in terms of how they are constructed, how they are interpreted & the uses to which they are put. It never ceases to amaze me that academics who are highly trained at sniffing out nonsense and in carefully investigating arguments and evidence are quite uncritical when faced with a table with lots of university names. I guess we are human after all.
History is written by the winners of course & universities who do well out of them tend to be quite positive about them. Those who don't tend to keep quiet, lest they be accused of "cribbing and moaning".

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20071108145803689