Trinity has been ranked Ireland’s top university in the Sunday Times Good University Guide 2020 for the 18th consecutive year.
University College Dublin (UCD) and University College Cork (UCC) came in joint-second place.
The guide measures all third-level education institutions in Ireland on eight different criteria: leaving certificate points achieved by incoming students, research profile, employment prospects for graduates, staff to student ratio, progression rate, expenditure on facilities, academic achievement of students and student satisfaction levels.
Trinity ranked first in three of the eight categories, including highest research income, highest expenditure on facilities and services per student annually and the highest median Leaving Certificate points obtained by undergraduates enrolling in College last year.
The guide found that Trinity students achieve an average of 520 Leaving Cert points.
The Irish Examiner reported that the Good University Guide’s Dr Colm Murphy said that Trinity’s lead over other universities is closing: “Both University College Dublin and University College Cork are within a whisker now of Trinity College and both are joint-second in the table.”
Murphy said that Trinity’s low student satisfaction scores was the reason for the narrowing gap, with both UCD and UCC scoring higher than Trinity on that measure. Athlone Institute of Technology scored the highest of all institutions.
Trinity was ranked 15th out of 21 institutions for student satisfaction. College also placed last in two categories – effective teaching practices and quality of interactions.
This year Trinity dropped 44 places to 164th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. College also fell in the QS World University Rankings, from 104th to 108th.
Last year, Provost Patrick Prendergast dismissed such 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”
Trinity was ranked 67th in the QS rankings when Prendergast began his tenure as Provost.
Trinity’s decline in the rankings comes as Irish universities grapple with a severe lack of government funding. Speaking to The University Times in March 2016, Rankings Editor of Times Higher Education Phil Baty said that “money talks, money’s important, and there is a sense, I think, where universities that we can see are starved of funding or lacking sufficient funding to stay competitive are suffering in rankings”.
