Carl O’Brien

Three Irish universities have ranked in the top 150 best “young universities” league table.

The Times Higher Education “150 under 50” ranks colleges which have been established in the past half century.

Maynooth University ranked the best of the Irish universities (68th place), followed by Dublin City University (79th place), and University of Limerick (between 101 and 150th).

Overall, the rankings are dominated by Asian and European universities, challenging the traditional grip held by the US and UK.

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, founded in 1969 in Switzerland, took the top spot.

East Asian institutions occupied four of the next five places, including Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2nd), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (3rd), Pohang University of Science and Technology, South Korea (5th) and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea (6th).

Universities based in the US and UK occupied just three of the top 40 places and 30 places in the overall rankings, respectively.