Go Figure: How good are UK universities?

How good are UK universities? In his regular column, Michael Blastland says comparison is irresistible. But watch out.

We're bad, they're good, gotta change.
Can't help looking over our shoulders, can we, at the way the rest of the world behaves and performs? Comparison is compulsive.
And so we should. It would be surprising if we had the edge every which way.
But to state the obvious, people are different in different countries because they're different, if you see what I mean. That is, international comparisons are seldom like with like. Some pesky social or cultural difference gets in the way - and one simple metric doesn't show it.
A great example recently - of how obvious, but vital, differences go unnoticed in big debates - was how UK and US universities compare.
The standard story is: not well. US good, UK lagging. And a common metric is that, according to one ranking, the US has 13 universities in the world top 20 to the UK's four.
Writing in the London Review of Books, Howard Hotson picked a couple of differences between the US and the UK like, er… population.