I found this interesting:

The combined quality of America's top-200 universities vastly outstrips that of any other country, with only the UK standing out from the rest of the pack. Hence the prima facie credibility of the market fundamentalists' argument.

But if we correct for size, this credibility instantly vanishes. If we divide the number of top universities for each country by its population, the US plummets to 14th place on the international league table of university systems. If we divide the number of top universities by each country's GDP, the wealthy US still manages no better than 14th. And if we divide the number of top institutions by total spending on higher education to measure value for money, then the US - which spends more of its national wealth on higher education than any other country - drops into the bottom quarter of the table: to 16th of the 20 countries for which we have relevant data.

Examining UK performance in the same way is no less instructive. Relative to GDP, the UK is in third place, behind only Hong Kong and the Netherlands. Relative to total spending on higher education (for which we lack data for Hong Kong and Switzerland), the UK claims first place, offering six times better value for money than the US. And in terms of value offered for public spending on higher education, the UK is in a league of its own: offering a 50 per cent better return on public investment than the nearest rival, and far more value than the other countries that fund higher education partly through relatively high tuition fees.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=417652&c=1

But does this take into account teaching quality, ie how good they are at teaching the students. Of course the UK will be good value because we have probably the shortest bachelor's degrees available anywhere, but what of the quality of graduates that we produce?

BTW, if you are going to plagiarise an article, I would'nt put the link at the bottom, take time to formulate your own arguements would be my advice

Not sure I am plagiarising anything here

Well, you presented a block of text written by someone else without quotation marks or making it explicitly clear that it is not your own words (pasting a hyperlink at the bottom is not enough 'referencing' - I initially thought it was further reading or the source of the data you'd used to come up with what I thought was your analysis.)

If you don't get why presenting text in this way could be regarded as plagiarism then you might hit trouble in your studies. Get some guidance about this.

Interesting article though, thanks for sharing.

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Sorry to say but I was not hoping to get this work published as my own on here. Think it is pretty clear enough for a casual forum.

Maybe some people should allow themselves to get out Ph.Dwarrior mode and relax.

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It's nothing about academia - it's about good t'internet etiquette. I know non-academic forums where you'd have been pulled up for the same thing. The way you put it, it sounded like you'd done your own analysis of the Times Data and were presenting a finding that you thought was interesting. All you had to do what put quotation marks. Not exactly rocket science.

To be honest I don't really give a monkeys in this instance, but you didn't seem to get why someone mentioned plagiarism, hence why I gave an explanation.

I really don't care. If anyone is silly enough to think I am posting this as my own I think they could do with a nap

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