Trinity ranked 53rd in world and 13th in Europe

Running Bing · 08-11-2007 03:43PM #1

OK rankings are not the be all and end all but they count for a lot imo and once again TCD shows it is the premier university on the island with a great performance.

Must say I am very impressed with this, punching well above its weight.

Time Magazine · 08-11-2007 03:47PM

I for one would like to thank our government for rewarding this achievement with a 7% cut in funding.

08-11-2007 03:59PM

...how?

Thirdfox · 08-11-2007 04:05PM

We're ahead of LSE??? Somehow I doubt that... anyway - go us!

Does anyone have the full table of results?

ApeXaviour · 08-11-2007 04:06PM

I'm a little astounded myself... bit strange. I'd like to see a breakdown if there's one

Time Magazine · 08-11-2007 04:07PM

The table is available online from tomorrow.

bellton · 08-11-2007 04:14PM

My personal experience was that I found it to be full of cliques, parallel universe nerds (who became cool, because in numbers terms they were in the ascendancy) and overall lacking in facilities, academic materials, enlightenment.
But I did study/sleepwalk my way through BESS, until the moment after my pass degree year, mid-way through my finals when I had enough. I wouldn't even think that it is even the best college in Dublin, in realistic terms. Or else, our institutions are a shambles.

Time Magazine · 08-11-2007 04:40PM

You know they don't rank universities based on the number of cliques, right?

europerson · 08-11-2007 04:49PM

I must say I am surprised, but, at the same time, well done to all of the College community.

the flananator · 08-11-2007 05:36PM

Who compiles the lsit?

Out of interest, where did UCD come?

bellton · 08-11-2007 05:39PM

Ibid wrote: »

You know they don't rank universities based on the number of cliques, right?

Diversity, participation from minority groups

Surely these are both elements that might fit into the rank

that answer your question

John · 08-11-2007 05:41PM

bellton wrote: »

Diversity, participation from minority groups

Surely these are both elements that might fit into the rank

that answer your question

I can't imagine them having the same weight as academic achievement, research, etc.

bellton · 08-11-2007 05:46PM

obviously not the same weight as elements you mentioned, but a weighting nonetheless. Mine was an informed personal observation about TCD.

niall2j · 08-11-2007 05:47PM

It's the Times Higher Education Supplement (www.thes.co.uk/)

I spent some time looking at these and other organisations methods for ranking universities recently and the methodology used here seemed to be the best imo (though not perfect).

It's 50% qualitative - they essentially ask thousands of academics worldwide who the top 20 institutions in their field are and compile the replies, like a ballot.

The other 50% is quantitative - based mainly on research outputs, like number of journal papers published per year, etc. There's a small bit to do with international diversity of students and faculty aswell I think. Bellton - you'd be surprised how very little undergraduate related stuff goes into these rankings - in general, the research stuff is where it's at.

It's a fair bit better than some of the other methods which are a lot narrower in how they rate colleges so I think people in Trinity should be proud.. fair play to ye

Will be interesting to see now if some of the other Irish universities have lifted themselves also...

EDIT:
Seems UCD made it into the top 200 worldwide (up to 179) and UCC up 100 places to 286 - DCU in top 500 too.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/trinity-top-of-the-class-as-colleges-make-global-grade-1214964.html

John · 08-11-2007 05:48PM

bellton wrote: »

obviously not the same weight as elements you mentioned, but a weighting nonetheless. Mine was an informed personal observation about TCD.

Yes but at the end of the day it is one person's informed opinion versus a bunch of statistics on various qualities that a university is deemed to have in order to be good.

bellton · 08-11-2007 05:50PM

and you can lie and manipulate statistics in order to lobby for more funding for research. Anyway, academic achievement and meaningful research are alien concepts for many of the half wits clogging up the education system. Or do you just blindly believe everything you read?

r3nu4l · 08-11-2007 05:54PM

Well Cambridge University is often touted as being one of the best in the World yet I've lived with and am friends with Cambridge Science Graduates (Selwyn College). These people graduated with Biology Degrees - Genetics. I also work with Cambridge Science graduates.

I am continuously shocked and appalled at the lack of knowledge these people have in the areas in which they had supposedly 'specialised' as undergraduates. No, these people did not graduate with poor degrees, the minimum qualification is an upper second class honours degree (referred to in Cambridge as a 'gentlemans degree' because it indicates that a 'fellow' had a social life outside study but wasn't quite a p1sshead)

With my personal experience in mind, I take these types of surveys with a pinch of salt tbh so 'no great shakes' imo.

Doodee · 08-11-2007 05:55PM

Wasn't DIT considered the hardest Uni to graduate from?

Well done Trinners i guess.

niall2j · 08-11-2007 06:06PM

r3nu4l wrote: »

Well Cambridge University is often touted as being one of the best in the World...

In my experience in my own field, that's because it is. It comes back to research at the end of the day, postgrads, postdocs and so on. The professor in Cambridge wrote the book (literally!) on what I and lots of my postgrad colleagues do.

Undergrad is important of course, but just because some people you know who attended Cambridge are no great shakes at what they do doesn't mean Cambridge is overrated... it just means they're no great shakes!

Running Bing · 08-11-2007 06:07PM

Doodee wrote: »

Wasn't DIT considered the hardest Uni to graduate from?

Well done Trinners i guess.

Where did you get that from?

If your talking about dropout rate I dont think that says much about difficulty.

Stargal · 08-11-2007 06:09PM

Well according to the article in the Indo today, the ranking is based on findings which include the number of citations of the university's academic work in international journals, recruiter review (?), the ratios of international students and the staff:student ratios. It also mentions 'a survey of academics worldwide'.

There'll be more details from THES tomorrow but there's an interesting mixture of qualitative and quantitative stuff there. I wonder how much of Trinity's jump is down to Hegarty 'talking the talk' - basically he's been bigging up Trin as a world-class university for a few years now so people are obviously beginning to pay attention to what he's been saying. It doesn't seem that there's been a massive shift in standards in the college in the past few years so I wonder if it's just really great PR?

Doodee wrote:

Wasn't DIT considered the hardest Uni to graduate from?

Do you mean that DIT had the lowest numbers of students who actually finished their degrees? I don't quite get you. What's the source?

Doodee · 08-11-2007 06:17PM

was on the radio a few months back IIRC

r3nu4l · 08-11-2007 06:24PM

niall2j wrote: »

In my experience in my own field, that's because it is. It comes back to research at the end of the day, postgrads, postdocs and so on. The professor in Cambridge wrote the book (literally!) on what I and lots of my postgrad colleagues do.

Undergrad is important of course, but just because some people you know who attended Cambridge are no great shakes at what they do doesn't mean Cambridge is overrated... it just means they're no great shakes!

Now you've stumbled onto my point!

You are of course correct. The researchers, PhD students and post-doctoral scientists are the ones that truly earn the University their reputation.

However, particularly with post-docs, a massive proportion of them did not do their initial undergraduate degree at the institution to which they are now affiliated. They received their training elsewhere. Hence, these result have no bearing on the quality of teaching at these universities and do not indicate that the degree obtained from the University itself is actually any good!

A university can have a brilliant reputation for research and yet it's teaching can be absolutely terrible! As an example, I know some absolutely fantastic researchers who are ranked very highly in their respective fields of biological research but who despise lecturing and readily admit that they aren't bothered with the content of the courses they lecture and don't put time into what they lecture.

In some cases these guys have their post-docs lecturing for them but admit that the post-doc is restricted to using their notes and has no freedom to update the lecture notes or make them more relevant.

One lecturer I know in Cambridge admitted privately to me that his undergradute lectures are 'pretty poor' and that undergraduates from his course would have 'a lot of work to do' to update their learnings to anything approaching acceptable.

So in summary, these studies are more often about research and do not reflext the quality of the undergraduate degree. Having excellent researchers does not mean the undergraduate degree is any good

r3nu4l · 08-11-2007 06:31PM

BTW, Trinity spent a lot of time gathering some of the best researchers in Ireland to the University. Why? Well the best researchers get the biggest grants and the University takes overheads from each grant so the University therefore gets a lot more money.

At one time both Prof ********** and Prof ********** worked at NUI Maynooth Biology Department. TCD made them offers that NUIM refused to match...so needless to say, they left. Both of these guys (Whom I haven't named but some will guess) are world class researchers and now receive massive SFI funding. Recently a certain Bioinformatics lecturer left NUI Maynooth for TCD as well. This guy is also one of the European 'up and coming' Young Researchers and already receives excellent grants.

TCD has invested heavily in attracting research talent and it shows, so fair play to them for that!

defiantshrimp · 08-11-2007 07:06PM

Thirdfox wrote: »

We're ahead of LSE??? Somehow I doubt that... anyway - go us!

Does anyone have the full table of results?

I think that might have to do with LSE focusing on purely social sciences. Thus it gets less in the way of research grants, etc. It is still certainly the best place in Europe for economics and bats up there with the US Unis.

seraphimvc · 08-11-2007 07:20PM

LMAO there are tonnes of ranking thingy out there ,which one is OP referring??:D

as soon as trinity the best in ireland,aint us happy enough??

p/s:this is by far the most persuasive uni ranking you can get i guess,try it out.
so far as i can remember :http://www.webometrics.info/index.html

Stargal · 08-11-2007 07:40PM

seraphimvc wrote: »

LMAO there are tonnes of ranking thingy out there ,which one is OP referring??:D

Uh, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranking, which came out today. Have you even read this thread?

niall2j · 08-11-2007 07:51PM

r3nu4l wrote: »

...

So in summary, these studies are more often about research and do not reflext the quality of the undergraduate degree. Having excellent researchers does not mean the undergraduate degree is any good

Fair point. For better or worse though, research is where it's at if universities want recognition and I would agree with that approach. It's not as easy to compare undergrad performance worldwide as it is for research. That said, the THES method does include some undergrad based performance criteria in its rankings, so it's not totally ignored either.

Running Bing · 08-11-2007 08:01PM

seraphimvc wrote: »

LMAO there are tonnes of ranking thingy out there ,which one is OP referring??:D

as soon as trinity the best in ireland,aint us happy enough??

p/s:this is by far the most persuasive uni ranking you can get i guess,try it out.
so far as i can remember :http://www.webometrics.info/index.html

Not quite sure what the highlighted part means but Id just like to point out that Trinity is the highest ranked Irish institution on that list as well:D

seraphimvc · 08-11-2007 08:06PM

Stargal wrote: »

Uh, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranking, which came out today. Have you even read this thread?

yes...i was reading it...5 mins after i posted my post:D

please correct me if i am wrong...*seems very likely i am wrong tho:D*

this is so far what i can get on:
http://www.thes.co.uk/Awards/2007/
THES from UK is funny,all UK Uni on the top of any lists
and whatever the newspaper said...
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/trinity-top-of-the-class-as-colleges-make-global-grade-1214964.html
''However, it was the results of the 'Times Higher Education Supplement' (THES) table that caused most delight. ''
so,tell me...are you not referring the table from THES?so where is tat 53rd place came from??

for me,as a perfectly normal college student:D they look like a way of promoting themselves,they MADE a way to promote themselves.

seraphimvc · 08-11-2007 08:11PM

Babybing wrote: »

Not quite sure what the highlighted part means but Id just like to point out that Trinity is the highest ranked Irish institution on that list as well:D

mate,that's exactly what i mean:p TCD is the best university in the country...even Martian knows that...;)

Trinity ranked 53rd in world and 13th in Europe

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