Quinn: Colleges cannot be slaves to global ratings

COLLEGES must avoid being slaves to rankings despite their importance for attracting investment and top researchers, according to Education Minister Ruairí Quinn.

Although questions have been raised about the time and energy invested by some universities on improving their position in world rankings, the minister recognised their importance. “If we’re trying to attract research grants, if you’re trying to attract research fellows, the first thing you need if you’re going to a strange place, you look up the Lonely Planet and these things are just the academic equivalent of the Lonely Planet.”

But authorities on the subject, including Dublin Institute of Technology’s Professor Ellen Hazelkorn, who addressed the subject in the Irish Examiner in September, have posed questions about whether they measure quality or simply investment.

Mr Quinn appreciated the quandary, pointing to the prominence of US, British and colleges from other English-speaking countries among the top institutions in last month’s QS World University rankings.

“And is that a distortion of the index itself? You can construct an index and put it into it an intelligence quota that gives added value to people with red hair, or freckles, and suddenly the Irish look like geniuses, it depends on what goes into them.

“But it is still an incredible achievement that we had seven colleges [in the QS rankings] in the top 500.”

Only University College Cork and Dublin City University improved their positions on last year in the QS rankings. TCD fell from 52nd to 65th and UCD from 114th to 134th.

“A university that’s competing for research grants, for students and a whole host of other things, it has to have regard to them,” said Mr Quinn. “Whether they should be slaves to them and distort the entire academic architecture, I would say no, it’s a matter of balance.”