New global university ranking, funded by the EU, also scores NUI Galway highly on graduate employability, innovation and commercialisation, international academic staff, doctorate degrees and joint publications

NUI Galway has been given the highest ranking in a number of areas in U-Multirank, a new EU Commission-led initiative to measure excellence in higher education and research institutions worldwide. The indicators, published today across Europe show that NUI Galway ranked highest in nearly half of the metrics included in this, the first year of published data.

NUI Galway was awarded the top ranking for both Arts Graduates working in the region and Masters of Arts graduates working in the region. Student internships in the region also scored highly. NUI Galway's focus on internationalisation was also recognised as the University was rated highly for the mobility of its students.

As one of Ireland's leading universities for technology transfer, NUI Galway scored top marks for innovation and bringing new products to market; patents awarded and patents filed. The University's track record in creating a sustainable funding base for research and development was also commended with a top ranking for sourcing external research income and sourcing income from private sources for research.

NUI Galway President Dr Jim Browne, welcomed today’s results saying "I welcome the EU’s effort to create a more transparent system of recognising excellence in the university sector. I’m particularly pleased to note the strong performance in securing regional employment for our humanities graduates and internships for current students, confirming NUI Galway’s role as a vital economic driver of employment, learning and research."

U-Multirank is a new global university ranking funded by the European Commission and takes a different approach to existing global rankings of universities; it is multi-dimensional and compares university performance across a range of different activities grading them from “A” (very good) to “E” (weak). It does not produce a league table of the world’s “top” 100 universities based on composite scores. Instead, it allows users to identify a university’s strengths and weaknesses, or the aspects that most interest them.

“We are delighted to have been able to design and implement this new user-driven and multi-dimensional ranking that goes beyond simplistic league tables and that addresses many of the criticisms of existing global university rankings,” said Professor Dr Frans van Vught, from the Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, one of the lead partners of the consortium.

The fields of study selected for assessment in 2014 were Business, Physics and Mechanical Engineering. The ranking system currently includes over 850 universities from 70 countries around the world; 62% in Europe, 17% in North America, 14% in Asia and 7% from Oceania, Latin America and Africa.

Further information on U-Multirank is available at www.umultirank.org

-ends-