NUI Galway is the only Irish institution to improve its standing in the QS World University Rankings 2014-2015, rising four places to 280th place in this year’s league table.
Dr Jim Browne, president of NUI Galway, said of the achievement: “This is good news for NUI Galway and further acknowledgement of the developments in teaching and research that have taken place at this university in recent years. Although all ranking systems have their limitations in that they seek to measure performance across a narrow range of criteria, the QS World University Rankings is one of the best regarded evaluations of higher education in the world.”
The global emphasis on high-impact scientific and technological research is the key driver of leadership in the QS World University Rankings. The rankings are, for the third year, led by MIT, with Imperial College London the biggest climber in the top 10, leapfrogging Harvard, UCL and Oxford to rank second equal in the world, tied with University of Cambridge.
QS Head of Research Ben Sowter said: “In the wake of the recession, both governments and private sector funding sources are placing greater emphasis on high-impact STEM research, much of which takes place in specialist institutions. Tech-focused institutions are increasingly the focal point of a global race for innovation. With budgets from public sources increasingly coming under strain, institutions seem more focused than ever on potentially lucrative research in science, technology and medicine.”
The QS World University Rankings have been running since 2004 and are amongst the highest profile global evaluations of comparative university quality. The World University Rankings were conceived to present a multi-faceted view of the relative strengths of the world’s leading universities.
The calculations leading to the QS World University Rankings are based on data gathered in the following categories: Academic peer review, employer review, international faculty ratio, international student ratio, student faculty ratio, and citations per faculty (citation data supplied by Scopus ).
