Exactly how much is five million Euro worth converted into ranking places

One very useful piece of information to emerge from the Trinity College Dublin (TCD) rankings fiasco is the likely effect on the rankings of injecting money into universities.

When TCD reported to Times Higher Education THE  that it had almost no income at all, 355 Euro in total, of which 111 Euro was research income and 5 Euro from industry, it was ranked in the 201 - 250 band in the world university rankings. Let's be generous and say that it was 201st. But when the correct numbers were inserted, 355 million in total (of which 111 million is research income and 5 million industry income) it was in 131st= place.

So we can say crudely that increasing (or rather reporting) overall institutional income by 5 million Euro (keeping the proportions for research income and industry income constant) translates into one place in the overall world rankings.

Obviously this is not going to apply as we go up the rankings. I suspect that Caltech will need a lot more than an extra 5 million Euro or 5 million anything to oust Oxford from the top of the charts.

Anyway, there it is. Five million Euro and the national flagship advances one spot up the THE world rankings. It sounds a lot but when the minister for arts, sports and tourism spends 120 Euro for hat rental, and thousands for cars and hotels, there are perhaps worse things the Irish government could do with the taxpayers' money.