Ninth Level Ireland

“Lizzie Gadd argues that any commitment to responsible research assessment as outlined in DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment) and other such manifestos needs to include action on global university rankings. Highlighting four fundamental critiques of the way in which journal metrics and university rankings have been deployed in higher education, she proposes universities could unite around the principle of being ‘much more than their rank’ …” (more)

[LSE Impact Blog, 10 May]

“Global university rankings may be distorted by the business activities of the ranker, including selling consulting, analytics and other services to universities, according to a new study from the University of California (UC), Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education …” (more)

[Brendan O’Malley, World University News, 1 May]

“International rankings of universities raise numerous questions. How can you fairly compare universities that operate in different countries, with different sources of funds and different missions? Despite the obstacles, several players do such comparisons: Times Higher Education, US News & World Report and QS are three. And despite the concerns of many educators about rankings, they are very popular with international students (and many host countries) …” (more)

[Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, 27 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 comparison across four broad areas: research, stewardship, outreach and teaching. The 2021 Impact Rankings is the third edition and the overall ranking includes 1,115 universities from 94 countries/regions …” (more).

Irish rankings:

University College Cork – 8
University College Dublin – 22
University of Limerick – 50=
Trinity College Dublin – 57=
Dublin City University – 101-200
RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences – 101-200
Maynooth University – 201-300
Technological University Dublin – 201-300
Waterford Institute of Technology – 801-1000

“The latest Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2021 carried few surprises when it was released in September. The usual contestants led the rankings. Yet among these are some institutions, operating under totalitarian regimes, that do not match our expectation of what universities are about …” (more)

[Carsten A Holz, University World News, 17 April]

“University of Limerick has achieved the highest possible standard in the new QS Stars Rating System, the only university in Ireland to achieve this in 2021. UL joins an exclusive group of universities worldwide to receive the overall five-star status in the ranking, which is considered one of the most influential and credible ratings for universities globally …” (more)

[James Cox, BreakingNews.ie, 6 April]

“University rankings are imbued with great significance by university staff and leadership teams and the outcomes of their ranking systems can have significant material consequences. Drawing on a curious example from their own institution, Jelena Brankovic argues that taking rankings as proxies for quality or performance in a linear-causal fashion is a fundamentally ill-conceived way of understanding the value of a university, in particular, when publicly embraced by none other than scholars themselves …” (more)

[LSE Impact Blog, 22 March]

“Imagine you are a first-year student starting at one of the world’s top universities. Picture the lecture hall – as it was before the pandemic shifted classes online – well-worn from the generations that came before, or perhaps shiny and new, representing the promise of higher education in a dynamic, forward-looking society …” (more)

[Robert Quinn, Janika Spannagel and Ilyas Saliba, University World News, 11 March]

“Irish university courses in the arts, humanities and nursing rank highly on a global scale, despite an ‘extremely challenging’ landscape. The latest round of university rankings show the sector has increased its footings in the top-200 global subject rankings, despite budgetary constraints, according to the latest round of QS ranking …” (more)

[Jess Casey, Irish Examiner, 3 March]

“The Times Higher Education World University Rankings today announced that Trinity is the eight most international university in the world. College was in 17th place last year, and is the only Irish university on the list. This year marks a bounce of eight places …” (more)

[Emer Moreau, University Times, 28 January]

“The honour was awarded to Queen’s University by Octopus Ventures, which is a leading European Venture Capital Firm. Investing in the youth of today was never more important …” (more)

[Peter Donnelly, The Gown, 28 January]

“The IUA welcomes the publication of the Higher Education Research & Development Survey (HERD) by the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Leo Varadkar TD. This latest HERD survey clearly shows the need for a step change in research and innovation investment in Ireland given the fall in our research spend rankings from 14th to 23rd place in the OECD list …” (more)

[IUA, 20 January]

“Irish universities have dropped steadily in research spending rankings among OECD countries since 2008, according to a report published by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. In 2018, Ireland was ranked 23rd out of 37 countries, a fall of nine places since 2008 …” (more)

[Emer Moreau, University Times, 20 January]

“France’s higher education system can be described as sui generis and has been categorized as fragmented, stratified, and multitype. From the early twenty-first century, France has been rationalizing its higher education system, following disappointment in the lacklustre performance of its institutions in global university rankings …” (more)

[Ludovic Highman, International Higher Education Winter Issue No 105 (2021)]

“The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has produced an aggregate ranking of global universities, known as ARTU. This is based on the ‘Big Three’ rankers, QS, Times Higher Education (THE) and the Shanghai ARWU. The scores that are given are not an average but a aggregate of their ranks, which is then inverted. Nor surprisingly, Australian universities do well and the University of Melbourne is the best in Australia …” (more)

[University Ranking Watch, 7 January]

“University College Cork has been ranked as one of the most sustainable universities in the world, making it into the top ten ‘greenest universities’ in an international ranking. The UI GreenMetric World University Ranking examines sustainability practices in universities across the world …” (more)

[Maeve Lee, EchoLive, 8 December]

“Researchers often complain about the indicators that hiring and grant committees use to judge them. In the past ten years, initiatives such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment and the Leiden Manifesto have pushed universities to rethink how and when to use publications and citations to assess research and researchers …” (more)

[Elizabeth Gadd, Nature, 24 November]

“I have commented on Indian responses to the rankings before and many times on problems with the better known rankings so I apologize for repeating myself. The influence of global university rankings continues to expand. There seem to be few areas of higher education or research where they are not consulted or used for appointments, promotion, admissions, project evaluation, grant approval, assessment, publicity and so on …” (more)

[Richard Holmes, University Ranking Watch, 17 November]

“I couldn’t resist sharing this clip of Nobel Laureate and Vice Chancellor of the Australian National University, Brian Schmidt giving it to the university rankings system with both barrels. The whole video is quite long but the link hopefully takes you to the point where Brian takes aim …” (more)

[In the Dark, 12 November]

“This morning, the Sunday Times released their annual Good University Guide. The annual university guide ranks higher level institutions in Ireland for the next upcoming year, at a time when prospective sixth year students in secondary school are expected to start making their decision for next year …” (more)

[Shannon Connolly, Trinity News, 1 November]