From the ranks

From Mr Gary Slapper

Sir: The ranking of universities according to the employability of their graduates (report, 12 June) is an exercise greatly to be regretted: a view corroborated by the well-known excellence of those institutions (such as Leeds, Reading and Southampton) diagrammatically pilloried by appearing in the "Bottom 10" league places.

The tragedy of this latest governmentally led mania with league-tables of performance is that prospective students may well start to use such a table when making their choices of where to study. Those universities at the bottom will spiral downwards into oblivion.

Effectively, it will be major employers (banks, insurance companies and large multinational companies) that will dictate whether certain types of knowledge, courses and, ultimately, universities, shall live or die.

Yours faithfully,

GARY SLAPPER

Staffordshire University

Stoke-on-Trent