It ' s a good thing our elections are based on electoral votes and not popular votes , huh ? <| sep |> Hijacking top comment for a quick note Though it ' s a fairly popular opinion that there are too many Universities in the UK and that funding should be consolidated to those who excel Universities often don ' t excel at everything . For example , University of Bedfordshire is ranked 120 th out of 127 universities in the UK , but is ranked 7 th for linguistics . Many of the other rankings are in the midforties too , like social science and sports science . This also ignores the interdependence of departments at Universities . Closing a chemistry department will impact the biology department since it will make certain analysis and collaboration far more difficult , as well as closing off open units where students might want to study , or swap , undergraduate courses . With this in mind I urge people to be careful in welcoming news that lower ranked universities will close !