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By Niall Murray, Correspondent of Education
University College Cork and Maynooth University are the only two Irish colleges to improve their rankings in the latest rankings of the Times Higher Education World University.
Trinity College Dublin remains the best-placed institution in Ireland, but has slipped three places to 120th place in a chart once again crowned by the British Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
The TCD is followed by University College Dublin (UCD) and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), with the two institutions retaining a position between 201 and 250.
University College Cork has risen from a ranking of 301 to 350, but NUI Galway slipped between 50 and 150 places by ranking 201-250 in the same category a year ago.
Maynooth University also recorded gains by entering the top 400 of the Times Higher Education (THE) ranking of 2019, but the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) fell 800th.
Dublin City University and the University of Limerick retain their places, ranked between 401 and 500, and 501 to 600, respectively.
They attributed the slight drop in TCD's ranking to a drop in its score on teaching, one of the many parameters used to rank. It toppled from 131 to 117 last year, but the university said that staying in the top 120 world universities testified to its quality.
"We saw an increase in performance in four of the five categories in which we are ranked. However, it is a measure of the competitiveness of the field because better performances on our part are not reflected in the rankings, "said Linda Doyle, TCD's Dean of Research.
This increase in competition has also been cited as a factor by rank publisher Ellie Bothwell, with steady improvements being made by Asian universities to many European colleges.
Japan replaces the United Kingdom as the second most represented country, with US universities continuing to dominate. Tshingua's new Chinese university has surpassed the London School of Economics and the University of Edinburgh.
The main measurement criteria of universities include teaching, volume, revenue and reputation of their research, citations showing the influence of their research, international staff, students and research collaborations
For more information on this story, check out the Irish Examiner of tomorrow.
