Student vs Learner Terminology — Irish Universities
Percentage of "learner/learners" vs "student/students" across 12 Irish university websites Source: Google site: search result counts (bare domain, all subdomains) · June 2026
Colour scheme:Applies to the university-type colours throughout
Learner % by University (sorted highest to lowest)
"Learner" is the minority term at every university. Each bar totals 100% of all student+learner mentions: the coloured slice is the learner share, the grey remainder is "student/students". Sorted by learner share — even the highest (SETU) is barely a fifth.
Student % vs Learner % by University
Learner % by University Type
There are two fair ways to combine universities into one figure for a type, and they can give different answers:
Average — work out each university's learner % on its own, then average those percentages. Every university counts equally, whether its website is large or small.
Weighted — add up everyone's raw word counts first, then work out a single percentage from the combined totals. Universities with bigger websites contribute more words, so they pull the figure their way.
A worked example. Imagine a type with just two universities:
Tiny College: 80 "student" words and 20 "learner" words → 20% learner.
Big University: 9,800 "student" words and 200 "learner" words → 2% learner.
The Average is (20% + 2%) ÷ 2 = 11% — Tiny College's enthusiasm for "learner" counts just as much as Big University's.
The Weighted figure pools the words: (20 + 200) learner out of (100 + 10,000) total = 220 / 10,100 = 2.2% — Big University's sheer volume dominates.
Trinity is the standout case here: its website is far larger than the others, so it barely uses "learner" in relative terms and drags the weighted Traditional figure right down, even though the average stays higher.
The Learner % (bar) column is drawn to scale (relative to the highest learner % in the table). Data: Google site: search result counts (June 2026). Counts are estimates and may vary.