Trinity College Dublin is ranked 53rd in the world by Times Higher Education Supplement League Tables

Posted on: 08 November 2007

Trinity College Dublin has been ranked  53rd place in the top world universities by the Times Higher Education Supplement’s just published world ranking of universities. It has also been ranked  13th place in Europe. Trinity is the only Irish university to make it into the top 100 world universities. This is the highest ranking the College has ever achieved, up 25 places on last year’s world ranking of 78. In achieving this position, Trinity College has overtaken other prestigious institutions such as the London School of Economics, the University of Washington and St Andrew’s in Scotland among others.

Commenting on the significance of the achievement, TCD Provost, Dr John Hegarty said: “Our ambition was to build on our reputation as Ireland’s number one university and be among the top 50 universities in the world. We are indeed very pleased to have almost achieved that in a relatively short period of time. Such a high ranking is an outstanding achievement for a university in a small country, competing internationally with much larger and better-resourced universities.  A university’s reputation is built on the ability and performance of staff and students. The fact that we ranked so highly relative to the resources available is a reflection of the very high calibre of students seeking entry to Trinity, the high-quality research produced by Trinity College researchers and the calibre and dedication of all our academic, administrative and support staff.”

“Our strategic priorities are aligned to the highest academic values as well as to the national goals of social, cultural and economic vibrancy.  We are pleased with our improvement in the rankings which includes international recognition from academics and employers. It is our hope and intention to maintain that position.”

For the purpose of compiling the rankings, 5,100 academics from around the world were surveyed concerning the research quality of the university and their views accounted for 40% of the score. In addition, 1,480 international employers in a recruiter review were surveyed concerning their views on graduate employability which accounted for 10%. The other half of the marks was made up of teaching quality which was measured by staff: student ratio (20%), a further 20% was allocated to research quality which was gauged by the university’s citations of major papers. The international outlook was also measured by international faculty staff (5%) and international students (5%).  Trinity College scored highly in all of these categories.