Brussels, 01/02/2013 (Agence Europe) - Irish Education and Skills Minister Ruairi Quinn officially launched the new multidimensional university ranking system, U-Multirank, in Dublin on 30 January, unveiled by the European Commission on 17 December 2012 (see EUROPE 10754). The system is different from traditional approaches in that others tend to focus to too great an extent on research excellence but U-Multirank is based on a raft of factors in five different domains - reputation for research, quality of teaching and training, international openness, success in knowledge transfer and contribution to growth in the region. “U-Multirank will give students and universities a clear overview of their performance in a range of key domains and will help update and improve the quality of higher education by allowing universities to find their strong and weak points and learn from their peers”, said EU Education, Culture, Youth and Multilingualism Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou. Quinn said the Irish Presidency is firmly committed to deploying the new phase of U-Multirank. (IL/transl.fl)