Another university league table

Honestly, I have no idea what to say about this one. My university comes in at number 49. And what’s wrong with Salford (or maybe right)?

So where do we want to be on this league table?

Well, you probably thought that you had seen all the university rankings, both locally and globally. But think again. A student website, StudentBeans.com, has produced a league table with a difference: one which measures in which UK universities students have the most sex. The results was assembled from the findings of a survey of 4,656 students in 100 universities. The resulting table has Bangor University in Wales (and we won’t go into the interpretation suggested by the students of the university’s name) at the top, while at the bottom we have the University of Essex. My own university, Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, is at number 25, and I have no idea whether this pleases me or whether I’d prefer it somewhere else in the table.

Scotland has only one university in the top 20 (Heriot Watt at number 2), while Wales is dramatically over-represented there with four universities. But it absolutely impossible to identify any particular trend in the rankings. There is no overall difference between pre- and post-1992 universities, or between the regions (except for Wales). So it is possible that the results are a fluke governed purely by the habits of this particular group of students, and that the pattern could change dramatically in a year or two; we shall have to wait and see.

Clearly it is not saying anything very new to point out that there is a fair amount of sex in universities. But this also reminds us that universities need to take seriously issues such as sexual health and personal safety, as well as various codes of ethics.

In the meantime, I suspect that this table is not being highlighted in any university’s PR materials.