Letterkenny Institute of Technology has been ranked 16th out of a list of Ireland’s top 21 universities – down two places from its position last year.
The LYIT campus
Trinity College Dublin (TCD) is the top ranked university in The Sunday Times Good University Guide league table, published tomorrow, September 28.
The 13th annual edition of the guide sees Trinity maintain its position as the best of Ireland’s seven universities, while Dublin IT is the top Institute of Technology, ranking eighth overall.
The information is contained in The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2015, a 16-page supplement published free with the newspaper tomorrow.
LYIT shows a graduate employment rate of 88%, Firsts/2:1s of 56% and a completion rate of 83% of courses.
The rankings of all of the top eight institutions remain unchanged, although within the six performance indicators which make up an institution’s ranking there is considerable movement year on year with sharp variations in performance between colleges.
Amongst institutions included in the league table, the graduate employment ranking is topped by the University of Limerick – The Sunday Times University of the Year – jointly with IT Tallaght with just 5% of graduates still seeking work nine months after leaving. This compares to a rate almost four times higher (18%) at Athlone IT.
Trinity’s unemployment rate of 6% ranks the university fifth on this measure, but TCD builds up an unassailable lead in the overall table with a strong performance across all measures. It recruits the best qualified students, who amass an average 508 Leaving Certificate points each. They go on to achieve more firsts and 2:1s (74%) than students at any other institution.
University College Cork tops the research rankings earning more from research per head of academic staff than any other institution. Competitive research funding of more than €78m amounts to more than €111,800 per head of staff, comfortably more than both University College Dublin (€104,855) and TCD (€97,853) in second and third place respectively.
Dublin IT has comfortably the best completion rate of any third level institution in Ireland with 92% of students who enrolled in 2008 graduating by summer 2013. The next best performance sees 85% of students complete their studies at Galway-Mayo IT – the Sunday Times Institute of Technology of the Year – and IT Carlow, last year’s IT of the Year winner. IT Sligo has the lowest completion rate, standing at just 70%.
The overall table is ranked on six performance measures: the average Leaving Certificate points needed for entry, course completion rates, the proportion of top degrees awarded, graduate job prospects, the income generated from research and staffing levels. Three of the indicators are shown in the table above.
The Sunday Times Good University Guide is now in its 13th year of publication. It provides the definitive rankings for Irish third-level institutions, together with profiles of each institution and a view from students of what it is like to study there. It also contains the first full listing of 2015 courses and the first round entry points needed to access these courses from the recently-completed 2014 admissions cycle. The online edition available at www.thesundaytimes.ie/gooduniversityguide features fully searchable tables on each of the measures on which institutions are ranked, together with profiles of each.
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