Advice on advertising issued to universities after watchdog finds ads from six institutions broke UK rules

The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) said that universities must also be careful not to "misrepresent" the evidence they do hold.

The advice was issued by CAP after advertising watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that six adverts run by six different UK universities breached UK advertising rules.

The ASA said Falmouth University’s claims of being the UK’s number one "arts university" and the UK’s number one "creative university" were misleading and could not be substantiated. It further took issue with the University of West London's claim that it was one of the top 10 modern UK universities, and also upheld a complaint about the University of Strathclyde’s claims that its physics department was ranked number one for research in the UK.

Claims by the University of Leicester that it was 'a top 1% world university' and "a world ranked university” were also deemed misleading, unsubstantiated and in breach of comparative advertising rules, while the ASA censured the University of East Anglia over its claims that it was ranked in the top five for student satisfaction in a student survey. Teesside University was also told that it had failed to sufficiently qualify its claims that it was the "top university in England for long-term graduate prospects".

Rami Labib, an expert in consumer law at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said: "In spite of the CMA’s 2015 market investigation and provision of advice to higher education providers (69-page / 679KB PDF) on how to ensure compliance with consumer law, these rulings clearly demonstrates that some providers are still falling short in their compliance obligations."

"In the wake of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, which will potentially open the market to further new entrants, and with Brexit looming, competition to attract students has never been so high and providers are understandably looking to make themselves stand out from the crowd. However, they must be sure to act with integrity, with students’ interests at heart and within the confines of UK advertising rules and consumer protection law.”

CAP said the type of evidence that universities need to hold to support their claims will depend on the type of claims they make but "must support it in the context of how it’s likely to be interpreted by the average consumer, who is unlikely to have sector specific knowledge".

"If you claim to have been ‘named’ or ‘ranked’ by another body, such as a university league table, this must be a genuine and accurate reflection of the results you’re referencing. You should only refer to information, analysis and categories that are explicitly stated and defined in relevant reports or league tables, and should not present claims with a further layer of your own analysis or categorisation of results," it said.

CAP said universities should also avoid "making objective claims based on [their] own analysis of data from another party’s publication or results, particularly if the data could be interpreted in a number of different ways depending on the method used".

Universities were further encouraged to make the basis of their claims clear, such by "stating the name and date of the report or league table results on which the claim is based", and said claims that involve comparing their own courses or institutions to others "should not be stated as objective facts or in absolute terms without this information". CAP said universities should "make sure that consumers can access that information for themselves in line with the requirement that comparative claims are verifiable".

Universities were also advised not to assume that people viewing their adverts have "sector specific knowledge" and ensure the claims they make are "unambiguous". They should therefore avoid using "broad terms that could be interpreted in a number of ways ... without sufficient qualification of its meaning", CAP said.