UCC and Maynooth up in Times Higher Education World University rankings

By Niall Murray, Education Correspondent

University College Cork and Maynooth University are the only two Irish colleges to improve their placings in the latest Times Higher Education World University rankings.

Trinity College Dublin remains Ireland’s best-placed institution but has slipped three places to 120th in a table topped again by British universities, Oxford and Cambridge.

TCD is followed by University College Dublin (UCD) and Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), both retaining places ranked between 201 and 250.

University College Cork has moved up a banding to be ranked between 301 and 350, but NUI Galway slips into the same category having been ranked between 201-250 a year ago. Maynooth University also made gains by entering the top 400 of the 2019 Times Higher Education (THE) rankings, but Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) has fallen out of the top 800.

Dublin City University and University of Limerick retain their placings, ranked between 401 and 500, and between 501 to 600, respectively.

THE attributed the slight fall in TCD’s ranking to a dip in its score on teaching, one of the several metrics used to compile the rankings. It reverses a jump from 131st to 117th last year, but the university said remaining in the top 120 global universities is testament to its quality.

We have seen an increase in performance across four of the five categories in which we are ranked, which is to be welcomed. However, it is a measure of how competitive the field is that better performance on our part is not reflected in the rankings,” said TCD dean of research Professor Linda Doyle.

This increased competition was also cited as a factor by THE rankings editor Ellie Bothwell, with continuing improvements by Asian universities affecting many European colleges.

Japan replaces the UK as the second-most represented nation, with US universities continuing to dominate. China’s new top university at Tshingua has overtaken the London School of Economics and the University of Edinburgh.

The drop of DIT may cause concern for the prospects of the Technological University Dublin, due to be established in January by the merger of DIT with the institutes of technology at Blanchardstown and Tallaght. The Higher Education Authority has already flagged the potential diminution of research metrics when the traditionally research-heavy DIT amalgamates into the country’s first TU with two relatively newer institutions.

Maynooth University’s progress reverses last year’s drop out of the top 400 which had been attributed to a fall in research citations and declining proportions of academic staff with PhDs.

The main criteria under which universities are measured include teaching, the volume, income and reputation of their research, citations showing the influence of their research, international staff, students and research collaborations, and knowledge transfer through collaborations with industry and others.

As reported in the Irish Examiner yesterday, the Department of Education has raised seeming inconsistencies in some university rankings, in which there has been a general decline by Irish colleges in the past five years.

Documents released under freedom of information law show that officials noted there were falls in “employer perceptions” in the overall rankings of Irish colleges in the QS World University Rankings 2019, even though some Irish universities performed strongly in the same organisation’s graduate employability rankings last year.