Trinity has risen from 101st to 98th place in the QS world university rankings due to be published tomorrow, putting it in the top 100 universities worldwide for the first time in five years.
Trinity has been ranked 101st for the past two years, an increase from 108th place in 2019. It remains the top performing university in Ireland, with the second highest, University College Dublin (UCD), ranking 181st.
College first fell out of the top 100 universities in 2018, where it dropped from 88th to 108th place.
Other Irish universities performed poorly in the rankings, with University College Cork (UCC) falling out of the top 300 universities and dropping five places to 303rd.
Dublin City University (DCU) is the only other Irish university to have increased its ranking, moving from 490th to 471st position.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) maintains its spot as the highest-ranked institution in the world, with the University of Oxford dropping to third as the University of Cambridge overtook it to second place.
The QS world university rankings are based on six factors: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty-to-student ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty ratio, and international students ratio. Each institution is also given an overall score based on these six factors.
In 2021 Trinity maintained its ranking of 101st from 2020, scoring very highly in both “international faculty ratio” and “international students ratio”, receiving a score of 99.9% and 94.2% respectively. However, it only received a score of 27.7% in the faculty-to-student ratio, and an overall score of 59.5%.
In a press statement at the time, then-Provost Patrick Prendergast said: “We are pleased to see Trinity retaining its position as Ireland’s leading university in the QS World University Rankings.”
“After an enormously challenging year, this ranking makes me proud of our excellent students and faculty, whose scholarship and achievements are critical to our continued success at a global level.”
“Trinity”, he added, “scored particularly well on academic reputation, reflecting the success of the entire College community in prioritising excellence in research”.
“We would have performed even better were it not for the relatively high staff-student ratios common in Irish institutions. I know the Government has plans to invest more in third level education and I hope that this issue will slowly be resolved”, Prendergast said.
