JUST ONE IRISH university managed to improve its standing on the latest international university comparison table, while several others fell in the rankings.

Trinity College and UCD both fell from their position within the top 100 of the Times Higher Education University Rankings 2011-2012, with Trinity dropping from 76 to 117 and UCD down from 94 to 159.

NUI Maynooth succeeding in getting in to the top 400 this year.

UCC and NUI Galway are both outside the top 300, while Dublin City University and Dublin Institute of Technology have slipped out of the top 400.

The rankings are based on over a dozen different performance indicators including teaching, research volume and influence, industry income and international outlook.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education told TheJournal.ie this morning that rankings and league tables “need to be interpreted with caution” as criteria differences between them can lead to very different league results.

However, they said that the results of this league are recognised internationally as markers of quality and cannot be ignored.

“While some higher education systems have invested heavily in elite institutions and have adopted a policy of differentiated support for different tiers of institutions, in Ireland our focus is on sustaining and advancing performance across the system,” the spokesperson added.

“We can continue to draw some encouragement from the fact that two Irish institutions are in the top 200 Times HE ranked institutions – and four Irish institutions were in the recently published top 300 QS ranked universities – out of some 15,000 universities worldwide.”