Trinity has jumped nine places from 164th to 155th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, securing its status as Ireland’s top university for another year.
The bounce in rankings will come as a relief for College, after Trinity dropped 44 places in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings last year.
In a press statement, Dean of Research Linda Doyle said: “We are delighted to see Trinity College Dublin improving its position in this global metric.”
“Excellence in research lies at the heart of our identity as a university and has a fundamental influence on our teaching.”
“This speaks to the quality of our researchers, who are excelling in difficult times in which funding is harder to come by than ever”, she added.
The Times Higher Education World Rankings analyses over 1,250 universities with 13 separate indicators grouped into five categories: teaching, research, citations, international mix and industry income.
Trinity has had a complicated relationship with rankings over the past few years, both publicly dismissing their importance and putting work into improving their standing.
In 2018, Provost Patrick Prendergast dismissed rankings as “reductive” and said that they did not acknowledge the college’s recent achievements and initiatives.
In his final State of the College Address, he said: “I believe we are under-ranked – it’s taking time for the rankings to catch up with all we’ve done.”
In June, it was announced that Trinity had arrested a series of drops in the QS World University Rankings, climbing from 108th to 101st after two years of slides.
After last year’s drop in the rankings, Trinity became more vocal about the importance of rankings, and called for a national strategy to tackle higher education’s funding issues.
Doyle said at the time that the ranking were “an undoubtedly disappointing result”, adding that “higher education rankings need to be made a national priority as other countries have done”.
