Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I will come back to that issue, but will respond first to the point made by Deputy Griffin. International university rankings are like tourist guides. They highlight different aspects of universities. The United States have ranked their universities for a long time. The rankings are like league tables and can be manipulated according to what one wants to try to emphasise. For example, more marks can be allocated for research than for something such as the pupil-teacher ratio. The tables can be constructed in different ways.

Now, because international third level education has become a major, global commodity, these rankings cannot be ignored. Depending on how we count, there are 15,000 or 13,000 universities in the world. The higher number includes colleges of further education. All of Ireland's seven universities rank - subject to correction - within the top 600 in the world. Therefore, we are very much up there. In terms of individual rankings for different kinds of activities, such as business schools, the Smurfit business school is highly ranked. I do not know the exact ranking offhand. The English department at Trinity College is ranked either 14th or 15th in the world.

The Shanghai index was put together in China by the Chinese education authorities to see what it would need to get its universities up to the level of those in the United States. In that regard, a large focus of attention is on the amount of research money that goes into them and also on the quality of the teaching staff. One of the indicators is how many Nobel prize winners are on the staff. This has led to certain distortions in the rankings. I learned recently that Singapore intends to get the University of Singapore into the top 50 and that it intends to spend accordingly. It is a bit like buying a player for a football team, like buying Ronaldo or whoever. A university can get a Nobel prize winner to be on the staff on terms and conditions negotiated privately with that person, but the teaching component and interaction with students is not necessarily specified. However, in terms of ticking boxes for the rankings, that sort of thing will happen.

The European Union has embarked on a ranking system of its own and I have encouraged all of the European countries and institutions in that. Rankings are now a fact of life, but they do not tell the full story. Frequently, they do not tell the full story as to the quality of the educational experience for most students.