Madam, - Much of the turmoil in Irish universities at present derives from what the president of University College Galway, Dr Iognaid Ó Muircheartaigh, calls the obsession with world rankings (Opinion & Analysis, August 31st). UCD, as is often repeated by its president, Dr Hugh Brady, is determined to get into the top 30 of European universities.
These rankings are carried out annually by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, using criteria which are heavily weighted to the sciences, with scant reference to the arts and humanities.
In these criteria, 10 per cent of the weighting goes for the number of the graduates winning Nobel prizes, 20 per cent for staff winning Nobel prizes and 20 per cent for articles published in the international journals Nature and Science. The remaining percentages relate directly to a university's research output and to its number of "highly cited" researchers.
The emphasis in these criteria is entirely on the research output of the university. The word "student" does not occur, and there is no reference whatever to the quality of teaching, or of a university's graduates, except in so far as they win Nobel prizes.
The prime responsibility of a university is in the education of its students and the quality of its graduates. Research is a vital and important part of the process at all levels, but is secondary to the educative function.
In meeting this responsibility, Irish universities have performed at the highest international academic standards and their graduates are holding their own anywhere in the world, as any analysis of graduate performance at home or abroad will readily attest. Furthermore, their research output is, in general, very good and world standard in many areas.
It is noteworthy too that no university in Ireland or Finland is in the top 30 universities in this world ranking, yet these two countries are the top performers in economic development in Europe.
The concept of a "research university" may be fine for the US, less so in the UK, but it is entirely inappropriate and wrong for Ireland. - Yours, etc,
JOHN KELLY, Professor Emeritus, University College Dublin.