Trinity College Dublin has topped the Sunday Times University league table for the fifth successive year, but its lead is narrowing, writes Colm Murphy. Its closest rival, University College Cork, has overtaken it in terms of producing the country’s brightest graduates. Some 70% of Cork’s graduates averaged a first or 2:1 last year, compared with 67% of Trinity’s. This is despite the fact that Trinity has the country’s brightest intake — its freshers average 78% in the Leaving Certificate. University College Dublin had the second highest intake in terms of academic ability and Cork the third.

Across our four other indicators — the staff/student ratio, graduate employment, completion, research funding secured per academic — Trinity faced increasing competition.

Ireland’s youngest university, Dublin City, overtook Trinity, the oldest, to head the research category. Its 350 academics attracted €91,429 each in research funding, compared with €82,270 at Trinity, which slumped to fourth place in this category. It is in this area that the gulf widened between the republic’s seven universities and 14 institutes of technology last year, with most ITs seeing their research income falling. This may be reversed next year, as many have secured increased research funding in the latest allocation of government monies.

Employment is consistently high among graduates, with little difference between those from universities or institutes of technology. The best were Tallaght and Waterford and the National College of Ireland, all with almost no former students jobless nine months after graduation. The institutes in Sligo, Cork and Letterkenny did worst, all with unemployment figures of more than 6%.

The league table highlights discrepancies in staffing that can be an important factor in the standard of teaching and academic support. For the student-to-staff ratio we took 10:1 as a benchmark of excellence. Dublin Institute of Technology was the only one to come near this, at 11.7 students to each full-time equivalent academic. IT, Carlow, however, had only one academic for every 18.2 students, due to rapid expansion. IT, Carlow also had the highest dropout rate alongside the three most peripheral institutes, Sligo, Letterkenny and Dundalk. Almost one in three certificate, ordinary degree and honours students at these four colleges do not complete.

IT, Blanchardstown, Ireland’s newest state college, fell to the bottom of the league largely because of a drop in points for entry, due to the glut of college places available. More encouragingly, Letterkenny rose up the table thanks to investment in research, facilities and retention — all high-point courses — significantly improving its performance.

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