“In the 2020 Executive MBA rankings produced by the Economist today, the Trinity Business School has risen to 11th in Europe and 4th across the UK and Ireland. The business school ranked first in Ireland, and scored in the top five places for gender diversity …” (more)
[Shannon Connolly, Trinity News, 29 June]
“League tables are renowned for realistic assessments of university performance to give wholly convincing rankings of institutions based on thoroughly credible criteria. And of course all the top rankers are renowned for their steady eye and firm grip on reality. Which is why, from time to time, we need a bit more creativity in league table creation …” (more)
[Paul Greatrix, Wonkhe, 26 June]
“Kathleen James-Chakraborty, a Professor of Art History in University College Dublin (UCD), wrote to The Irish Times criticising Irish universities’ approach to the QS World University Rankings. Eunan O’Halpin, a Professor of Contemporary Irish History in Trinity College Dublin, responded to her letter in agreement …” (more)
[Brigid Molloy, College Tribune, 24 June]
“Trinity Business School ranked 27th in Europe this year, according to the 2020 Global Masters in Finance rankings produced by the Financial Times (FT), and secured first place in Ireland for its MSc in Finance. University College Dublin’s (UCD) Smurfit Business School featured on the list at 41st place …” (more)
[Shannon Connolly, Trinity News, 15 June]
“Sir Prof Kathleen James-Chakraborty is quite right to note the distorting impact upon Irish universities of their current fixation with world rankings (Letters, June 11th). It has resulted in efforts to game the system in various ways …” (more)
[Eunan O’Halpin, Irish Times, 15 June]
“Five months ago, if you had told Trinity’s top officers that June would bring a seven-place rankings jump for the College, they’d likely have bitten your hand off. Then, all the talk at College level was about the importance of putting in place workable strategies, with little expense spared, to change a narrative about rankings that was fast becoming a genuine risk to Trinity’s reputation …” (more)
[University Times, 14 June]
“In the Irish Times Top 1,000 Companies today, Trinity has been ranked 191st in Ireland by turnover and 49th by number of employees. This makes College the second largest non-profit business in the Republic of Ireland …” (more)
[Shannon Connolly, Trinity News, 12 June]
“Universities around the world were largely unprepared for a sudden switch to online learning prior to the COVID-19 pandemic – with only a third providing full online courses in some form, according to data collected for the 2020 edition of U-Multirank …” (more)
[Nic Mitchell, University World News, 9 June]
“Five of Ireland’s top six universities have climbed up the latest set of global rankings with Trinity College Dublin placing just outside the top 100. The QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) World University Rankings indicate that the improved performance is linked to a stronger academic reputation and a higher proportion of international faculty members …” (more)
[Carl O’Brien, Irish Times, 10 June]
“The coronavirus has underscored inequities in American society, including among college students. When campuses first began emptying in early March, low-income and first-generation students were more likely to have lost critical sources of food and shelter. When courses moved online, a strong Wi-Fi connection and quiet place to focus were harder to come by …” (more)
[Francie Diep, Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 May]
“The UCD Smurfit Executive Development Centre and Irish Management Institute (IMI) have both been ranked among the best business schools globally. This is according to the 2020 Financial Times executive education rankings, which assess business schools across a number of criteria, including course quality, faculty, facilities and diversity …” (more)
[Irish Times, 11 May]
“Irish universities have performed strongly in a new global ranking which measures their social and economic impact. The Times Higher Education on Wednesday published its ‘2020 impact rankings’ which seeks to measure the social and economic impact of universities under the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals …” (more)
[Carl O’Brien, Irish Times, 22 April]
“The Times Higher Education Impact Rankings are the only global performance tables that assess universities against the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We use carefully calibrated indicators to provide comprehensive and balanced comparisons across three broad areas: research, outreach and stewardship. This second edition includes 766 universities from 85 countries.” (more)
Rankings for Irish institutions:
“I think most of you probably know the answer to this question already, but now there’s a detailed study on this topic. Here is the abstract of a paper on the arXiv on the subject …” (more)
[In the Dark, 21 April]
“… Times Higher Education (THE) is talking about a 3.0 version of its World University Rankings to be announced at this year’s academic summit in Toronto and implemented in 2021, a timetable that may not survive the current virus crisis. I will discuss what is wrong with the rankings, what THE could do, and what it might do …” (more)
[University Ranking Watch, 19 April]
“These are challenging times for all parts of higher education not least for the vital operation of university league table development. We all know how vital and serious these accurate university rankings really are and how fundamental to measuring institutional performance …” (more)
[Paul Greatrix, Wonkhe, 6 April]
“Trinity has fallen in all five broad areas measured by the QS World University Rankings by Subject for 2020. The College’s decline in subject rankings continues a trend of a downward spiral in world university rankings, which last year led it to call for a national strategy to improve the performance of all Irish universities in such rankings …” (more)
[Emer Moreau, University Times, 5 March]
“This week, students had their first glimpse of Trinity’s new strategic plan, which promises to overhaul many aspects of College life. The document contains a raft of promises, such as moderately increasing student numbers, attracting more capital investment and placing sustainability at the centre of Trinity’s mission …” (more)
[University Times, 2 February]
“John Fitzgerald of Swinburne University of Technology has written an article in the Journal of Political Risk that argues that Western universities should boycott, that is not participate in or refer to, the Shanghai rankings in order to show opposition to the current authoritarian trend in Chinese higher education …” (more)
[University Ranking Watch, 20 January]
Abstract: This paper presents findings from a research project which aimed to rank Australian higher education institutions on their ‘equity performance’; that is, the extent to which they were accessible for, supportive of and benefiting students traditionally under-represented in higher education. The study comprised a conceptual consideration of how higher education equity might be defined and empirically measured, drawing on extant scholarly research as well as observations from key stakeholders, including equity practitioners, researchers, policymakers and higher education executives and institutional planners. Based on these findings, a theoretical framework for higher education equity performance was constructed, and performance indicators identified and subjected to systematic assessment for real-world application. The ensuing ranking system was populated with institutional data from the 37 public universities in Australia. The findings from this analysis indicate that a ranking system may not be the optimal method for assessing higher education equity performance and highlights the subjective nature of both higher education equity and higher education ranking systems.
Tim Pitman, Daniel Edwards, Liang-Cheng Zhang, Paul Koshy and Julie McMillan, Constructing a ranking of higher education institutions based on equity: is it possible or desirable?, Higher Education (2020). Published: 3 January 2020.
