Lexicographic satisfaction

Look at these subject rankings from "The Good University Guide" Smethers. They are appalling! In half these subjects we are ranked worse than Funcaster City University."
The vice chancellor almost spat out the name of the former polytechnic.
"Oh I don't know Vice Chancellor, we are not doing so badly in Accounting and Finance, and look here at Biology, and Chemistry as well. "
"But look at this, Snethers, for Sociology we are right at the bottom just below the University of Barnstaple. I didn't even know they had a university in Barnstaple. How can it be? Our research rating and UCAS points are much better than these places. I need an explanation Snedders!"
"Well, Vice Chancellor, it seems to me that difference is mainly in the student satisfaction survey. It is where we loose out. I have been looking in to this and I think I have found the explanation."
"Well Smether out with it!"
I open my brief case and pull out a file of graphs printed in bold primary colours I had prepared in anticipation of this meeting.
"As you see Vice Chancellor there is a wide variation in our "student satisfaction survey" results ranging from "really quite happy" to "monumentally unhappy" and even some threatening legal action. And this varies with subject."
"Well we must analyze what the the best departments are doing and then instigate a staff development and training programme to disseminate best practice..."
"Actually Vice Chancellor", I interrupt, "I think it it much simpler than that if you will allow me to continue?"
"Go on then Smeddling.."
"Well I plotted the student satisfaction scores against various other key performance indicators, staff to student ratio, spend per student, value added, employment prospects, but I didn't find any significant correlation until I came to this one"
"That seems to be nearly a straight line, Snethers, but what is on the horizontal axis?"
"I just sorted them alphabetically Vice Chancellor"
"You mean to tell me that student satisfaction depends only on the name of the subject! Are you telling me that if we changed the subject, like 'Sociology' to 'Applied Sociology" or Psychology to 'Clinical Psychology' they would do better?"
"Well yes, they would improve relative to the others. Veterinary Science is doing especially badly. Perhaps they could specialize in Aardvark Studies?""
"Don't be facetious Snithling! What is the underlying cause?"
"Well, Vice Chancellor, it did take me a while to unearth the underlying cause of the lexicographically correlated satisfaction. It comes down to timetabling. Do you remember how we used to do the tome tabling?"
"Yes Snoddlers, there was that woman with the horn-rimmed glasses used to do it. What was her name...?"
"Her name was Mrs Tibbling, Vice Chancellor, and she used to do a remarkably good job. She really was very clever."
"So what became of her?"
"Well, Vice Chancellor, she took advantage of your very generous, Financial Inducement for Voluntary Early Retirement and Severance scheme. You approved her application yourself. She took her two-years-salary-in-advance and emigrated to Rotorua in New Zealand. She sent you a post card of the thermal springs if you remember."
So remind me. How do we do the timetabling now?
"Well our software procurement team recommended that we purchase a license for a program called "TimetableWizard". They assured us it would do the job. Mrs Tibbling had left detailed notes of all the constraints she used, you know that the film studies lectures need a big screen, the sociology students need rooms where they can break up in to small groups and discuss things, the maths lectures asked for blackboards (now superseded of course by clean modern electronic boards!). So we fed these in to the TimetableWizard and waited for him to wave his magic wand"
"So what happened?"
"Well it first said that there was no solution. So we relaxed the constraints a bit and eventually we got a timetable just in time for the new term. The problem was that the software works through each of the subjects in alphabetical order. So Accounting get all their lectures close together and clustered neatly together, by the time you get to Maths in the middle of the alphabet the students are mildly inconveniences with lectures right at the beginning and end of the day. By Sociology the students have to rollerblade around campus and have lectures at 9 and 5 four days a week, and by the time you get to Veterinary Science they were dashing from one side of campus to the other like the proverbial Calliphora vomitoria."
The Vice Chancellor looked at me quizzically. "Blue-bottomed fly, Vice Chancellor".
"Could we get Mrs Tiddling back?"
"No Vice Chancellor, don't you remember the FIVERS scheme specifically bared the former employee from working for this University for ten years?"