Trinity College Dublin has ranked 31st in the QS World Rankings’ first European-only rankings, making it the highest-rated Irish university in Europe.
The QS World University Rankings issued its first-ever list focusing solely on Europe, including 688 universities from across the continent.
The organisation said the “pursuit of excellence through research, scholarship and teaching is at the heart of a Trinity education”.
“Trinity students are taught by world-leading professors who are experts in their field,” it said. “Alongside nurturing minds and ground-breaking research, Trinity provides a diverse, interdisciplinary and inclusive environment.”
College was ranked 14th in Europe for employment outcomes, the highest ranking it received in any category.
Three Irish universities were in the top 100 in Europe; University College Dublin (UCD) ranked 71st in Europe, while the University of Galway ranked 98th.
University College Cork was just outside the top 100 at 109th, while Dublin City University and University of Limerick shared a joint 152nd.
Technological University Dublin was named at 286th, while Maynooth University was ranked at 311th.
In Northern Ireland, Queen’s University Belfast was ranked 70th in Europe.
Within the Northern European-specific ranking, College was ranked 19th out of 166 universities.
Overall, the University of Oxford was ranked the best university in Europe, closely followed by ETH Zurich in Switzerland.
Seven of the top ten universities in Europe are based in the UK.
The rankings were based on a scale from zero to 100, scoring universities based on factors such as global recognition, research, employment outcomes and quality of the surrounding city.
International student diversity, international faculty ratio, inbound exchange student ratio was also considered; College is ranked the 8th most international university in the world by the Times Higher Education Rankings.
In June, College ranked 81st in the top 100 QS worldwide rankings. This is a 17-place increase compared to last year when Trinity ranked 98th in the world. This is also College’s highest ranking since 2015, when it came 71st.
The QS rankings measure the performance of the world’s top 1,499 universities across 104 countries.
College’s highest QS World University Ranking ever was in 2009 at 43rd. Its subsequent decrease coincided with the global financial crisis and austerity measures.
In October of last year, Trinity ranked 161st in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, a 15-place drop compared to the previous year, which Provost Linda Doyle attributed to College’s high student-staff ratios, calling for increased government funding to tackle the issue.
