With a front page fanfare the Daily Telegraph launched another set of university league tables today with Clearing less than three weeks away.
Whatever their merits - and readers will want to check them out at the Good University Guide - the compilers make one false claim for a start.
"For the first time The UK University Guide's on-line interactivity will allow users to break away from the rigidities of existing newspaper and book-based guides," burbles the publicity from Mayfield University Consultants, repeated by the Telegraph.
As our regular readers will know the Guardian's university league tables have been interactive for many years and students can rate each subject according to their own preferences - do they think staff/student ratio or spending is crucial, or is it a job when they graduate?
Or perhaps the student verdict on teaching given in the National Student Survey is what counts?
(Our interactive tables are also an opportunity for academics to boost the performance of their own departments, of course.)
On the UK University Guide table you can't customise the tables for each subject as you can with the Guardian.
Students consulting the Guardian tables also get the benefit of the latest available data published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, rather than the two year-old figures which today's new tables appear to use.
If the Telegraph table looks oddly like the Times one - which failed to appear as scheduled this summer - that's because it is. A falling out between the Times and its tables compiler, Dr Bernard Kingston, has led to a parting of the ways and he is going it alone.
A new set of Times tables are now due to be published online in August, compiled by an Exeter University spinout company.
Apart from the data the main difference is that the Guardian focuses on teaching rather than research as the aspect of most interest to undergraduate students. If prestigious universities do well in the Guardian table - and they do - it is because of excellent teaching (probably informed by research) and not simply because they have research stars that humble first year students never meet.
One could say, you pays your money and you takes your choice - but it's all free online.
