TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN is the only Irish university to make it into the top 100, but there were small gains for our colleges in the QS World University Rankings 2018.
In all, eight Irish institutions made the world’s top 959. As a whole, however, Irish university rankings have declined in recent years.
Trinity only squeezed into the top 100 in last year’s rankings at 98, but comfortably made the grade this time as it rose 10 places to 88.
UCD and NUI Galway have also climbed up the rankings, and are now in 168th and 243rd place respectively. This increase was not dramatic, however, with UCD rising nine places and NUIG rising six places.
Our next best placed university was University College Cork who came in 283rd place for the second year in a row. Next was DCU in 391st place.
In recent years, there have been big gains in the rankings for NUI Galway, which was ranked 280 in 2014.
NUIG President Dr Jim Browne said: “The news today is further acknowledgement of the developments in teaching and research that have taken place at this University in recent years.”
Trinity had been going in the opposite direction, however, having held 71st place in the same year. UCD’s ranking has similarly worsened, as it came in 139th place in 2o14.
When just one Irish university made the top 200 list in the Times Higher Education rankings in 2016, its report warned that institutions here were under serious pressure.
It warned that to remain competitive, “we run serious risks to the quality of our system if current funding arrangements are not addressed”.
On a global level, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has topped the rankings for a sixth year running, with QS saying that they are “light years” ahead of the competition.
American and British universities dominate the top 10, with Stanford, Harvard, Caltech and Cambridge rounding out the top five.
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