No Irish University has made the Times Higher Education top 200 colleges in the world for the first time since the rankings began.
An error with the data Trinity College Dublin provided see the university temporarily removed whilst a review of its information is performed. The college is expected to be reintroduced in a revised ranking table later this year.
These results reflect the QS World University rankings, in which all but one Irish university, NUI Galway, fell in rankings. This has led to Fianna Fáil claiming that the fall in rankings is due to the lack of funding given to Irish Universities in the last five years.
University College Dublin also suffered a major setback as it fell out of the top 200 as well, resting in the 201-250 bracket and confirming the fears of many before the rankings were published that this could be a bad year for Irish universities.
Dublin City University maintained its place in the 401-500 bracket, with University College Cork and NUI Maynooth also retaining their places in the 301-400 bracket as well as University Limerick and Dublin Institute of Technology staying in the 501-600 and 701-800 brackets respectively.
There are, however, some positives to be taken from the recently published rankings. Both NUI Galway and Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland rose from the 251-300 bracket to join UCD in the 201-250 bracket, improvements that are to be recognised.
At the top of the rankings there was only one change within the top five Universities but it resulted in California Institute of Technology being replaced in the top spot by University of Oxford. Stanford University holds onto third place while in fourth, University of Cambridge finish just ahead of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in fifth.
Ian Brennan
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