Another year is down and, with it, another shoal of graduates is released into the real world. However, what follows the fanfare of General Admission is a much gloomier affair: the annual release of the Tompkins Table. Ranking the colleges by performance in final exams doesn’t seem to help anyone. It is merely a procession of percentages that tells you very little, symbolises much less, and is altogether a relic that we as a University would do well to shake off.

My problem with the Tompkins Table comes from my sheer inability to comprehend what it is for. Simply tracking undergraduate performance in exams seems…well, pointless. Irrespective of college, we all do the same exams, and we all get the same degree at the end of it. Those who achieve a first can make their flashy LinkedIn post, safe in the knowledge that the University of Cambridge has granted it to them, not their college.

Of course, the continued publication of the Tompkins Table feeds into well-established controversy over Cambridge’s ‘culture of overwork’. I don’t want to rehash the arguments that led to the University’s Review of Teaching here, but merely point out the obvious. If the one published annual ranking of each undergraduate college measures only academic performance, maybe this cultural problem is a bit clearer. Of course the list is not officially conducted by the University and its colleges, but still provides a nice feather in the cap of those that, by sheer coincidence, performed well.

"Simply tracking undergraduate performance in exams seems…well, pointless"

If anything, the table measures the one metric that colleges don’t impact. So when published, those sleuths who form character judgements of each college based upon this one measurement have a skewed picture of what Cambridge actually values. For a nostalgic alumnus, perhaps this ranking provides an amusing link to their alma mater, but for a prospective undergrad, nervously consulting this list as they make a fateful choice of college, I can’t think of anything worse.

Before these students have even applied, they have been subconsciously ensnared by the academic tunnel vision that prompted the Teaching Review. We would do a far greater service by ranking colleges on what actually matters: welfare spending, student satisfaction, even who has the best college bar. All of these tell prospective students what really matters, social factors that can seriously and meaningfully impact academic performance.

And this is my grumble with the Tompkins Table – it shows the smoke and not the fire. All we see are the soulless percentages of a strictly academic hierarchy, with no attention paid to what might have actually got a college to the top in the first place. Whatever Trinity is putting in their water to take the number one spot, we’re not privy to it. The Tompkins Table demands that we accept reality and just cross our fingers next year.

 "The Tompkins Table belongs to a University culture we ought to lose"

On a most definitely unrelated note, Trinity College has an endowment exceeding £2 billion. Natural Scientists at Christ’s have in the past been assigned as many as three supervisors for one module. Evidently, being at the top of the tree does not come without the resources to keep you there. And it’s the extent of those resources that we would do well to note, to rank in an actually beneficial alternative to the Tompkins Table.

Although, despite their reported £300m endowment, King’s aren’t reaping the academic rewards that supposedly come with it; they came a lowly 27th this year. So taking the table at face value, assuming its grade covers all from student grants to the quality of pints in the bar, seems not to help so much. And so we return to my primary grievance – what little scrap of information the table tells you, itself says nothing. The table merely occasions a fleeting pause for thought.

So, it is time we scrap the empty percentages. If the published table assessed colleges on their pastoral provision, on welfare spending, even the quality of their accommodation, we would at last have use for it. We would finally see the foundations of academic success, and prospective students might see what kind of community they are joining.

Colleges couldn’t hide behind percentages, but rather be held accountable and encouraged to provide all the tools to keep students both academically challenged and (dare we say it) content. The Tompkins Table belongs to a University culture we ought to lose. It all seems so simple; if you want to tackle a culture of overwork, then don’t rank students, or their colleges, exclusively on that work.