IN A boost to the stature of higher education in Ireland, Dublin City University has been ranked among the world’s top 50 new universities.

DCU is the only Irish university featured in the prestigious QS World University Rankings of colleges less than 50 years old. Established as a university in 1989, DCU, formerly the National Institute of Higher Education, is ranked 46th.

QS have recently examined the performance of 'young universities', defined as those established in the past 50 years. In the QS Ranking results for Young Universities released this week ,
DCU has been included in the Top 50 (at #46), and is the only Irish Higher Education institution to achieve this accolade! This can be viewed by clicking here. It places DCU in the same league as leading Universities, such as KAIST (South Korea), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), the University of Warwick (UK), and UC Irvine (USA).

The majority of Ireland’s seven universities, including UCD and Trinity College Dublin, are long-established and therefore outside the eligibility criteria. The QS rankings were published ahead of a Times Higher Education list of top new universities due to be published later this week.

Several Irish colleges, including NUI Maynooth and DCU, are expected to perform well on that list. The latest rankings are good news for an underfunded higher education sector in Ireland which has struggled with cost-cutting and higher staff-student ratios. In recent years, the ranking of Ireland’s two leading universities, TCD and UCD, has slipped dramatically in both the QS and THE tables.

Ireland has no college inside the top 100 in the world university rankings. The latest QS rankings show how younger colleges such as DCU have made huge strides in a relatively short period. The Chinese University of Hong Kong is ranked first on the list. DCU president Prof Brian Mac Craith last night welcomed the new ranking. “We are delighted with this outcome. The inclusion of DCU in this rankings table is a resounding international endorsement of our quality as a young, dynamic university which places a strong emphasis on excellence in our teaching, innovation and research,” he said.

DCU is ranked 326th in the world rankings of all universities published last year.

Based on an article by Sean Flynn, The Irish Times, 30/5/2012
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