Irish universities plummet in rankings; 4 UK institutions in top 5

FactCheck

Irish universities continue to fall in international rankings:

The QS rankings, one of the big three international league tables, showed Trinity College Dublin remained Ireland’s top university although it dropped from joint 61st place to joint 71st.

...

University College Dublin remained unchanged in this year’s survey at 139th; while NUI Galway rose four places to joint 280th.
For other Irish institutions, the trajectory was either down or unchanged: UCC dropped 20 places to joint 230th, and DCU slipped 15 places to 366th. University of Limerick remained unchanged in the 501-550 bracket but Dublin Institute of Technology dropped from the 501-550 bracket to the 551-600 band. NUI Maynooth also went down a band from 551-600 to 601-650.
Summarising their findings, QS said “2014/15 saw an overarching decline in Irish universities.”

Only UCD and NUIG bucked the trend, and 139th and 280th isn't exactly anything to be writing home about.

Meanwhile, over the water:

Improvements in research have seen Cambridge University and Imperial College London surpass Harvard University in the latest authoritative annual ranking of the world's top universities, published on Tuesday, with four British institutions in the top six.

The QS ranking of world universities, regarded as the most rigorous of its type, places Imperial and Cambridge as second equal, behind only the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the international stage in 2014, thanks to a year of impressive citations measured by QS's survey of academic output.

Harvard dropped from second to fourth overall. It was followed by Oxford and University College London in joint fifth place, with Stanford, Caltech, Princeton and Yale of the US filling out the rest of the top 10.

"These rankings support what our students, alumni, staff, friends and collaborators know, that Imperial is one of the world's great universities," said Professor Alice Gast, Imperial's new president of Imperial College and a leading chemical engineer. "Imperial has a rare ability to turn outstanding research into discoveries that have a real impact on the world."

Kings College London, Edinburgh, Bristol and Manchester universities are all in the top 30, capping the best performance by British institutions in the 10 years the QS rankings have been published. Glasgow, Warwick, Birmingham and Sheffield universities make the top 70. The 2014 rankings will also help British universities' efforts to attract research funding and recruit top-rate researchers and students.

...

Graduates of Oxford and Cambridge were rated as the world's most employable, with LSE graduates also highly regarded.

Given this information, it seems it's high time for far more of our brightest Leaving Cert students to start considering going abroad for their undergraduate degrees. An Oxbridge or Ivy League degree is life-changing, and student bursaries and loans make it affordable for anyone. Why waste your potential on a second-tier institution if you're capable of the best?

If you're hoping to get above 550 points (perhaps slightly higher, I'm not sure I'm keeping pace with grade inflation) it looks like a no-brainer to start working on your SAT scores and UCAS statement.

czx

FactCheck wrote: »

Only UCD and NUIG bucked the trend, and 139th and 280th isn't exactly anything to be writing home about.

Pretty good seeing as the UK alone has 15 times the population

anncoates

It's a bit of stretch to say that nobody that studied in an Irish university (or any other university outside the top ranked ones) isn't in a prestigious, highly enumerated career.

pickarooney

FactCheck wrote: »

Irish universities continue to fall in international rankings:



Only UCD and NUIG bucked the trend, and 139th and 280th isn't exactly anything to be writing home about.

Meanwhile, over the water:



Given this information, it seems it's high time for far more of our brightest Leaving Cert students to start considering going abroad for their undergraduate degrees. An Oxbridge or Ivy League degree is life-changing, and student bursaries and loans make it affordable for anyone. Why waste your potential on a second-tier institution if you're capable of the best?

If you're hoping to get above 550 points (perhaps slightly higher, I'm not sure I'm keeping pace with grade inflation) it looks like a no-brainer to start working on your SAT scores and UCAS statement.

Surely if the people who are currently going to Irish universities start going to British ones they'll start bringing the rankings down?

FactCheck

pickarooney wrote: »

Surely if the people who are currently going to Irish universities start going to British ones they'll start bringing the rankings down?

I'm not sure if you're purely joking (if so great) or if you're feeling a bit chippy, like you think I've slighted all of Ireland.

To be clear, no, the more people competing for places at these institutions, the better they'll continue to do.

The reason Irish institutions are failing and falling isn't because they aren't getting smart people. Those smart people are being let down. Institutions abroad are wealthier, with smaller class sizes (much of Oxbridge's teaching is 2- or 3- on 1, and that 1 isn't a struggling grad student but an internationally recognised professor).

FactCheck

czx wrote: »

Pretty good seeing as the UK alone has 15 times the population

Seriously, the "ah sure we're a great little country, punching way above our weight" is a big part of why we aren't doing better.

SpaceTime

I find these rankings very odd though. What had changed THAT dramatically as UCC in 12 months for example?

czx

FactCheck wrote: »

Seriously, the "ah sure we're a great little country, punching way above our weight" is a big part of why we aren't doing better.

It's more of a fact

OldRio

All to do with money. The wealthier institutions are abroad.

UCDVet

In my experiences with UCD - I feel like the ratings should be lower.

Don't get me wrong, lots of smart Professors and all that jazz. But, I don't think they could be any lazier or more disorganized....

SpaceTime

Lack of money and cuts all sorts of government funded research is probably the main reason.

The biggest issue is attracting foreign students. My Chinese relatives spend all their time looking up those tables. Too low a ranking and they won't attend the university or will want a major discount.

The Irish universities still aren't really in the big leagues when it comes to commercially driven and fundamental R&D either. They've definitely improved a lot especially Trinity, UCD and UCC and NUIG too but they could still do a lot more.

It's not a great situation when you've got your top 3 universities subject to recruitment freezes and having to politically justify new hires of academic staff which has been the case since the economic crisis took hold.

pickarooney

UCDVet wrote: »

In my experiences with UCD - I feel like the ratings should be lower.

Don't get me wrong, lots of smart Professors and all that jazz. But, I don't think they could be any lazier or more disorganized....

But you never went to UCD

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=91291538&postcount=32

kupus

Maybe get rid of all the rag week crap, it happens every week though. So instead of students concentrating on t1ts out tuesday in some sh1hole bar, they can concentrate on theory of thermodynamics Tuesday.
Or
Start paying for college (no grants or freebies) so the people that really want to go to college go to college and are there because they want to be, not cos their parents made them go.

pickarooney

kupus wrote: »

Start paying for college (no grants or freebies) so the people that really want to go to college go to college and are there because they want to be, not cos their parents made them go.

So they just have to really want to have enough money to pay the fees and the cash will magically appear, yeah?

So well fill up the colleges with rich people, a lot of them dumb as **** but as the points to get in plummet due to no uptake of places from the less well off.

And then some fairy magic happens and the university starts getting great results?

SpaceTime

I agree with toning down the RAG Week thing.

I was trying to get some work done in UCC this week and someone seems to thing it's acceptable to have a DJ blasting out music in the middle of a working day. It could be heard loudly throughout several buildings, including the research library.

We literally couldn't have a normal conversation across a conference room!

How is that acceptable?

Complete waste of a week.

kupus

Well then is it possible to donate money to schools and use this as a tax write off as in the case of american colleges.

UCDVet

pickarooney wrote: »

But you never went to UCD

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=91291538&postcount=32

I've never claimed to be a UCD student. But that doesn't mean I'm not around UCD students or paying tuition or hearing about classes that were cancelled or Professors that didn't show up or wondering why they can't publish the schedule for the semester in advance or tell me when the commencement dates are, etc, etc....

Compared to Universities I've attended in the past, it's very disorganized.

They might have brilliant Professors and do great research...but I'm more interested in the experience the students have and the knowledge they gain from the Profs.

Ziphius

pickarooney wrote: »

So they just have to really want to have enough money to pay the fees and the cash will magically appear, yeah?

So well fill up the colleges with rich people, a lot of them dumb as **** but as the points to get in plummet due to no uptake of places from the less well off.

And then some fairy magic happens and the university starts getting great results?

Well... with less students there would be a more favourable staff-student ratio (assuming the university could finance this). There would also be proportionately more international students further improving rankings. Finally, with fewer students academics would have more time to research and improve that, ever so important, citation index.

Not the way we should run our universities but it may well improve their rankings.

Zubeneschamali

SpaceTime wrote: »

Complete waste of a week.

Bad news: that wasn't Rag week, it was Fresher's week. Rag week is later in the year. And much rowdier.

Ziphius

UCDVet wrote: »

I've never claimed to be a UCD student. But that doesn't mean I'm not around UCD students or paying tuition or hearing about classes that were cancelled or Professors that didn't show up or wondering why they can't publish the schedule for the semester in advance or tell me when the commencement dates are, etc, etc....

Compared to Universities I've attended in the past, it's very disorganized.

They might have brilliant Professors and do great research...but I'm more interested in the experience the students have and the knowledge they gain from the Profs.

Ah, but were your past universities ranked above or below UCD in the QS rankings?

pickarooney

Why would international students improve the rankings, and why would they want to go to Irish universities in the first place? It would still just be a case of the richest foreign students rather than the brightest ones filling up the classes.

SpaceTime

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Bad news: that wasn't Rag week, it was Fresher's week. Rag week is later in the year. And much rowdier.

I forgot that.

There were US students in the library asking if this was normal and generally quite shocked.

Many people have paid a LOT of money and it's fairly reasonable to expect an "academic environment" rather than a music festival I think.

spurious

Not in one case are these 'tables' comparing like with like. Such a waste of time.

Ziphius

pickarooney wrote: »

Why would international students improve the rankings, and why would they want to go to Irish universities in the first place? It would still just be a case of the richest foreign students rather than the brightest ones filling up the classes.

Number of international students is one of the criteria which decide the rankings. Along with Academic Reputation, Employer Reputation, Faculty Student ratio, International Faculty, and Citations per Faculty.

These are what are important regarding the rankings. Not what happens during RAG week.

kupus

pickarooney wrote: »

So they just have to really want to have enough money to pay the fees and the cash will magically appear, yeah?

So well fill up the colleges with rich people, a lot of them dumb as **** but as the points to get in plummet due to no uptake of places from the less well off.

And then some fairy magic happens and the university starts getting great results?

Numbers of students drop so quality of teaching goes up.
Rich kids are always going to go. they have the money.
If the less well off cant go, well then they cant go. Thats life.
They have the option of being a mature student later on.

hfallada

Funding has been constantly cut for universities for over 7/8 years now. Ask any lecturer in any university how the amount of teaching assistants etc get less and less every year. Irish universities are seriously underfunded. Fees should be introduced for some courses which are expensive to run like medicine, pharmacy where as some of the arts courses only cost about €4,000 per year.

Rag week has nothing to do with the rankings. Tcd doesn't have rag week and it lost 10 places

FactCheck

FactCheck wrote: »

Irish universities continue to fall in international rankings:



Only UCD and NUIG bucked the trend, and 139th and 280th isn't exactly anything to be writing home about.

Meanwhile, over the water:



Given this information, it seems it's high time for far more of our brightest Leaving Cert students to start considering going abroad for their undergraduate degrees. An Oxbridge or Ivy League degree is life-changing, and student bursaries and loans make it affordable for anyone. Why waste your potential on a second-tier institution if you're capable of the best?

If you're hoping to get above 550 points (perhaps slightly higher, I'm not sure I'm keeping pace with grade inflation) it looks like a no-brainer to start working on your SAT scores and UCAS statement.

I studied in a course that has at least 99% graduate employment rate every year since 1994. I studied in Aberdeen. A first class honour degree from any university is more valuable than a second class honour degree from Cambridge. My profession (pharmacy) is so far ahead in the UK compared to Ireland. It is not even funny.

Intifada

lol blaming rag week for university rankings, christ alive

SpaceTime

kupus wrote: »

Numbers of students drop so quality of teaching goes up.
Rich kids are always going to go. they have the money.
If the less well off cant go, well then they cant go. Thats life.
They have the option of being a mature student later on.

You're forgetting these are PUBLIC universities. If the number of students drop, the funding will drop accordingly and the amount of staff will drop.

The universities need significantly more commercially driven research going on to drive their budgets.

They also need to push to be more active in PhD and postdoctoral research areas that are genuinely generating new knowledge. That and encouraging researchers to publish.

You don't climb the ranks otherwise.

pickarooney

kupus wrote: »

Numbers of students drop so quality of teaching goes up.
Rich kids are always going to go. they have the money.
If the less well off cant go, well then they cant go. Thats life.
They have the option of being a mature student later on.

If the total number of students drops, then so do the total fees (which are not being paid by students or the government). Or have I missed a bit?

Those rankings look suspiciously anglocentric in any case.

kupus

Intifada wrote: »

lol blaming rag week for university rankings, christ alive

Its not jsut rag week.... its the whole drinking culture of college

desertcircus

Not mentioned in the story: anything about assessing teaching quality, how financially manageable it is to attend as an undergraduate, or any of half a dozen other factors an eighteen-year-old LC student would probably like to know about. The number of citations a faculty earns is utterly meaningless for an undergraduate, especially measured at a university scale rather than within a department.

Cool Mo D

The reason the Irish colleges are falling is down to a lack of money. The quality of teaching in an institution is almost irrelevant to these rankings - most weight goes on the research output and repution of the university.

Since Irish universities have had their research funding slashed, and there is basically no standard career path for academics in Ireland, unlike the tenure track system in the USA, the reputation of Irish universities is dropping.

Here is an example of the real reason Irish universities are falling down the rankings. Just remember, rankings have almost nothing to do with the quality of education you get from a university, be it good, bad or indifferent.

SpaceTime

pickarooney wrote: »

If the total number of students drops, then so do the total fees (which are not being paid by students or the government). Or have I missed a bit?

Those rankings look suspiciously anglocentric in any case.

They're very much geared towards an American model of exclusive (and I mean that literally), relatively small institutions that have a large focus on postgraduate research.

Other than a handful of British universities, they seem to rank European public universities badly.

I'm not sure if they're actually measuring the right things or that they're even very fair.

I don't think Irish universities should be sitting on their hands either though. They need to be driving as much research as possible.

UCDVet

Ziphius wrote: »

Ah, but were your past universities ranked above or below UCD in the QS rankings?

Both actually.

Still, if you look at the methodology used - well, it's subjective at best. This is just my opinion, but as a (non-PhD) student, I don't care about

Citations per faculty at all - I've read some papers, a lot of them a crap. The majority of them are crap. And people writing crap papers cite people who wrote crap papers all the time. Also, if you do have some amazing researcher - who cares? Unless he or she is teaching the class and the class is at the level where it matters (high PhD level) - who cares? Not me.

International student ratio - Absolutely meaningless to me. Who cares. I want to learn the topics I signed up for. I don't care the country of origin of the girl sitting next to me.

International staff ratio - Could not care less. My only concern is that I can understand the staff. This is saying that an Irish Professor is more valuable in France than she is in Ireland. Nonsense.

That's 40% of their rankings that I absolutely think is meaningless. And to be honest 'Academic reputation' is already a cumulative measure of everything, and very likely to be meaningless.

So yeah, I don't personally put much value in the rankings, and while I've attended Universities ranked higher and lower than UCD - I can say that UCD is far more disorganized than any University I, or any family member, has attended. But that's not given any value at all in these rankings. Except possibly the ill-defined 'Academic reputation'.

Sugar Free

pickarooney wrote: »

Why would international students improve the rankings, and why would they want to go to Irish universities in the first place? It would still just be a case of the richest foreign students rather than the brightest ones filling up the classes.

Slightly OT but my experience of this during a masters in a business school is that they're a mixed bag (much like the Irish students). A few genuinely talented, smart and driven students, a few wasters and a lot of varying degrees in between.

All paying something like 35K (times 30 students or so) for the course I did. Decent little earner for the university.

Intifada

kupus wrote: »

Its not jsut rag week.... its the whole drinking culture of college

You're literally posting in a thread where English universities are being lauded.

Have you ever been to England, English universities specifically?

renegademaster

FactCheck wrote: »

Irish universities continue to fall in international rankings:



Only UCD and NUIG bucked the trend, and 139th and 280th isn't exactly anything to be writing home about.

Meanwhile, over the water:



Given this information, it seems it's high time for far more of our brightest Leaving Cert students to start considering going abroad for their undergraduate degrees. An Oxbridge or Ivy League degree is life-changing, and student bursaries and loans make it affordable for anyone. Why waste your potential on a second-tier institution if you're capable of the best?

If you're hoping to get above 550 points (perhaps slightly higher, I'm not sure I'm keeping pace with grade inflation) it looks like a no-brainer to start working on your SAT scores and UCAS statement.

correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't some one of our esteemed government ministers trying to tell us at some stage over the last 12 - 24 months that Irelands universities are amongst the best in the world

LOL

SpaceTime

renegademaster wrote: »

correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't some one of our esteemed government ministers trying to tell us at some stage over the last 12 - 24 months that Irelands universities are amongst the best in the world

LOL

It depends which set of matrixes you use to rank them and whether you're looking at full institutions or just individual schools /departments.

ghostchant

renegademaster wrote: »

correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't some one of our esteemed government ministers trying to tell us at some stage over the last 12 - 24 months that Irelands universities are amongst the best in the world

LOL

Considering the amount of universities in the world, they'd be right.

A quick google search shows anything from 9,000-20,000 universities (higher education institutions might be more accurate) - being conservative and taking 9000, UCD for instance would be in the top 2% in the world

The_Captain

Just FYI lads, those rankings are weighted heavily towards research and papers published by tenured staff, as opposed to a reflection of the actual teaching ability of the college.

You'll find that Irish unis have slipped in recent years due to a drop in the level of income, and there's a massive difference in the level of money available to Cambridge or MIT compared to taxpayer funded Irish institutions which have been struggling to cover operational costs since the recession.

UCDVet

ghostchant wrote: »

Considering the amount of universities in the world, they'd be right.

A quick google search shows anything from 9,000-20,000 universities (higher education institutions might be more accurate) - being conservative and taking 9000, UCD for instance would be in the top 2% in the world

Well sure - and I can brag to women about how I'm in the top 10% of global earners - but they'll still laugh when they see my tiny 1-bed apartment.

gesler

Good to have 4 of the 5 best colleges in the world on our doorstep, as far as local small country colleges go I think UCD and Trinity are punching above their weight

The_Captain

UCDVet wrote: »

Well sure - and I can brag to women about how I'm in the top 10% of global earners - but they'll still laugh when they see my tiny 1-bed apartment.

1-bed apartment is a funny name to give your penis

Peist2007

I went to both Trinity and NUIG and was really disappointed with the standard of lecturing, especially in NUIG. Some guy basically reading your notes back to you. I decided in week one of NUIG that lectures were a waste of time. I would read the notes in my own time. Turned out grand.

That is what i find the biggest problem with teaching in this country. Teachers dont teach. They regurgitate and expect stuff to be learnt off for a memory exam at the end of the year. Its no wonder other countries have to be moving ahead of us.

Intifada

Peist2007 wrote: »

I went to both Trinity and NUIG and was really disappointed with the standard of lecturing, especially in NUIG. Some guy basically reading your notes back to you. I decided in week one of NUIG that lectures were a waste of time. I would read the notes in my own time. Turned out grand.

Yup. I went to 2 lectures in 3 years and passed easily, could have done much better sure but that was only down to myself.

Depends on your subject though - the ones that deal in plain facts you're as well off reading them at home, but in others discussion might help.

The need for conventional classroom/lecture hall courses is rapidly coming to an end anyway. Prestige is the only thing that keeps them going.

Zubeneschamali

Peist2007 wrote: »

That is what i find the biggest problem with teaching in this country. Teachers dont teach.

I'd say the lecturers would be upset if teachers stood up and started teaching during lectures.

sunnyt

A lot of Irish Universities have had their funding cut and so are under huge pressure to accept international students who will pay big fees and increase department budgets. It can be hard to establish the academic ability of these students and there can be huge pressure to pass them regardless of performance. This in turn can lead to research for the sake of research; the research really does not add to what we know about the planet or make any difference to anyone...but hey...they've got a PhD and paid 40,000-50,000 euro in fees.
There is little or no career progression for lecturers and this can be reflected sometimes in their apathetic approach to teaching. I had some shocking lecturers at undergrad level and I went to the UK to do further studies as I was so put off by my undergrad experience.
Many foreign universities have also embraced e-learning; something Irish universities will need to do if they want to capture a broader audience. Very few Irish universities offer programmes through distance learning. While this may not be for everyone, universities such as LSE and Imperial offer a good choice of online courses which require nothing but a laptop and internet connection and so can attract a large volume of students from all over the world. The creme de la creme are unlikely to want to live in digs in Dublin while doing their further studies.
Saying that, as another poster put it, Trinity and UCD are still ranked in the top 2% of universities worldwide!

Peist2007

Intifada wrote: »

Yup. I went to 2 lectures in 3 years and passed easily, could have done much better sure but that was only down to myself.

Depends on your subject though - the ones that deal in plain facts you're as well off reading them at home, but in others discussion might help.

The need for conventional classroom/lecture hall courses is rapidly coming to an end anyway. Prestige is the only thing that keeps them going.

Yeah just learn off. Even the tutorials in Galway were crap, went to one tutorial in 5 years and easily got a couple of 2:1s. Plus, despite studying subjects i am now working professionally in, absolutely zero of it made any practical difference to me in the real world.

Peist2007

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

I'd say the lecturers would be upset if teachers stood up and started teaching during lectures.

I would include secondary school teachers in my summation. Although my opinion on that is tempered somewhat by the fact that i am older now and can see the middle of the road heads from my year in school who ended up secondary school teachers. I expected too much. I think it is reasonable to expect things to jump in university. Didnt really happen.

Iwasfrozen

Blame free fees. The government just isn't able to afford to keep our universities in adequate condition.

If the Irish government wants to reverse this thread they must abandon the idea of universal third level education and introduce and interest free loan system.

Third level education should be a privilege anyway.