Times Higher Education (THE) have released subject rankings for Life Sciences and Clinical, Pre-clinical and Health today. The rankings also included the performance of universities in the field of Psychology, the first year this area has been ranked.
Trinity dropped eight places in this year’s Life Sciences rankings, hitting 77th place. The Life Science rankings encompass the fields of Agriculture and Forestry, Biological Sciences, Veterinary Science and Sport Science. Despite this year’s drop, Trinity has been the making improvements in this category of rankings in recent years. Trinity was excluded from THE’s list until two years ago, when it placed 87th. It is the only Irish college to be featured in the top 100 for Life Sciences .
In addition, Trinity has been ranked 101-125 in the Clinical, Pre-clinical and Health subject ranking. This area encompasses Medicine and Dentistry, as well as other Health-related courses. Since THE began ranking this subject area in 2011, only one Irish college has placed in the top 100, when University College Dublin (UCD) was ranked 99th place in 2015/2016.
Psychology in Trinity has placed 92nd in the THE rankings for 2017/1018. Psychology used to fall under the Social Sciences rankings but, for the first time, the subject has been ranked separately. Education and Law will were also given individual rankings for the first time this year.
THE, which exams over 2000 universities worldwide,has expanded this year’s rankings to include 400 institutions, up from 100 last year. This brings THE closer in line with QS World University Rankings, the other major organisation to rank third-level institutions. QS ranks 500 universities each year.
To rank these 400 universities, THE used 13 performance indicators to judge the institutions on their “core mission”, which they cite as comprising of “teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.” When ranking universities, they consider factors such as the number of students per staff, percentage of international students and male-to-female ratio. Institutions provide and sign off on the data used by THE.
In September the overall 2017/2018 THE rankings were released, which saw Trinity climb 14 places to 117th, thus maintaining its position as the highest-ranked university in Ireland by THE’s standards. The organisation attributed Trinity’s rise to a stronger teaching reputation and greater research influence.