Australia's Best Universities

The Good Oil

Ranking the world's universities is a big job, and a difficult one. It's impossible to say how far the concept is meaningful. Everyone would agree that some universities are better than others, but how do we measure the differences?

Three organisations have put their hands up to do the job:

ARWU. The first was Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, which only began the exercise in 2003. Several international conferences later, these ratings are now conducted under the rubric of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) (or available from here— they seem to keep changing their minds about the url). This site also lists other rankings systems. Well worth visiting.
THE World University Rankings. A year later The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) in the United Kingdom conducted a parallel exercise. It was originally known as the THES rankings, then the QS/THES rankings when it joined with Quacquarelli Symonds. That relationship lasted until 2009. At first THES ranked only 200 universities, and made its results available only through a subscription-only pdf. For reasons that remain unclear, The Times Higher Education Supplement ditched Quacquarelli Symonds in 2009 and started production on a third rating system, this time in conjunction with Thomson Reuters. This is known as the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings. It fessed up on its website that it had right-royally screwed up the 2010 rankings for the University of Oslo, Monash University, and the University of Adelaide. Given that, we find it a little hard to accept their self-description as ‘the gold standard in international university performance comparisons’.
QS Topuniversities. After the split from THE, Quacquarelli Symonds continued the ratings as QS Topuniversities. It modestly describes itself as ‘the most trusted university ranking in the world’. How that accolade was achieved, we know not. From 2011 it included tuition fee information.

These ranking systems are the best we have, for all their defects. You can read a statistical comparison of the two here, and in this article in the Wikipedia. A more partisan and deranged-but nonetheless interesting-Wikipedia article can be found here.

As Aussies, we want to know where our universities stand. If you can't find your Aussie university here, you might want to rethink your educational choice. The lists rarely agree.

Updated Added rankings for 2011.

The ARWU rankings

The ARWU ranks the top 500 or so of the world's universities. In their analysis, Australia does surprisingly well: with a tiny 1.5% of global GDP and a minuscule 0.3% of global population, it has 3.8% of the world's top 500 universities.

We've read both a defence and critique of ARWU's methodology in one of our favourite journals, Scientometrics¹. You can find a further critique by Richard Holmes of the University of Malaysia in the Asian Journal of University Education. He also has some comments about Australian universities at a blog. Well worth reading.

The ARWU does not supply a specific rank after number 100, only a grouping. Admittedly, the groupings are inconsistent from year to year, but what the hey.

University	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
University of Melbourne	82	78	79	73	75	62	60
Australian National University	56	54	57	59	59	59	70
University of Queensland	101-152	102-150	102-150	101-151	101-151	101-150	86
University of Sydney	101-152	102-150	102-150	97	94	92	96
University of Western Australia	153-202	102-150	102-150	101-151	101-151	101-150	102-150
Monash University	203-300	201-300	203-304	201-302	201-302	151-200	151-200
University of New South Wales	153-202	151-200	151-202	152-200	152-200	151-200	151-200
Macquarie University	203-300	201-300	202-304	201-302	201-302	201-300	201-300
University of Adelaide	203-300	201-300	151-202	201-302	201-302	201-300	201-300
Flinders University of South Australia	401-500	401-500	305-402	303-401	303-401	301-400	301-400
James Cook University	-	401-500	403-510	303-401	402-501	301-400	301-400
University of Newcastle	301-400	301-400	305-402	303-401	303-401	301-400	301-400
University of Tasmania	401-500	401-500	403-510	303-401	303-401	401-500	301-400
University of Wollongong	-	-	403-510	303-401	303-401	301-400	401-500
Curtin University of Technology	-	-	-	-	402-501	401-500	401-500
La Trobe University	401-500	301-400	403-510	402-503	402-501	401-500	401-500
Swinburne University of Technology	-	-	-	-	402-501	401-500	401-500
Griffith University	-	-	-	-	-	-	401-500
University of Technology, Sydney	-	-	-	-	-	-	401-500
Murdoch University	401-500	401-500	403-510	-	-	-	-
University of New England	-	401-500	403-510	-	-	-	-
The ARWU ranking of Australian universities.

The QS Topuniversities rankings

Until 2007 QS Topuniversities ranked the top 200 of the world's universities. From 2008 it included the top 500. QS Topuniversities ranks the Australian universities much higher than ARWU does. We are more than dubious.

The table below lists every Australian university that has appeared in any of their rankings.

We haven't seen anyone defend the QS Topuniversities rankings in any scholarly journal: for that you have to go to this lunatic's email.

University	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
Australian National University	16	23	16	16	16	17	20	26
University of Melbourne	22	19	22	27	38	=36	38	31
University of Sydney	40	38	35	31	37	=36	37	38
University of Queensland	49	40	45	33	43	41	43	48
University of New South Wales	36	40	41	44	45	47	46	49
Monash University	33	34	38	43	47	45	61	60
University of Western Australia	96	80	111	64	83	84	89	73
University of Adelaide	56	80	105	62	106	81	103	92
Macquarie University	68	67	82	168	182	189	220	211
RMIT	55	82	146	200	206	223	-	228
University of South Australia	-	154	-	-	303	295	281	256
Curtin University of Technology	76	101	156	-	232	=244	274	258
Queensland University of Technology	-	118	192	195	212	=244	289	267
University of Technology, Sydney	113	87	-	-	234	232	257	268
University of Wollongong	-	-	196	199	207	251	267	269
University of Newcastle	-	127	-	-	-	266	256	291
Flinders University of South Australia	-	-	-	-	273	254	251	299
La Trobe University	142	98	-	-	242	241	286	317
University of Tasmania	151	166	-	-	291	326	-	343
Griffith University	-	-	-	-	325	291	-	346
James Cook University	-	-	-	-	401-500	=355	-	352
Deakin University	-	-	-	-	396	=355	-	401-450
Swinburne University of Technology	-	-	-	-	401-500	401-500	401-450	401-450
Murdoch University	-	-	-	-	401-500	401-500	451-500	501-550
University of Western Sydney	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	601+
The QS Topuniversities ranking of Australian universities.

The THE World University Rankings

This lists the word's top 500 universities.

University	2010	2011
University of Melbourne	36	37
Australian National University	43	38
University of Sydney	71	58
University of Queensland	81	74
Monash University	178	117
University of New South Wales	152	173
University of Western Australia	–	189
University of Adelaide	73	201-225
Macquarie University	–	226-250
University of Wollongong	–	251-275
Queensland University of Technology	–	276-300
University of Newcastle	–	276-300
Charles Darwin University	–	301-350
University of Tasmania	–	301-350
Curtin University of Technology	–	351-400
Deakin University	–	351-400
Flinders University of South Australia	–	351-400
Griffith University	–	351-400
La Trobe University	–	351-400
Swinburne University of Technology	–	351-400
University of South Australia	–	351-400
The THE World University Rankings ranking of Australian universities.

1. 'Academic ranking of world universities', Scientometrics (2005) 64(1):101; and 'Irreproducibility of the results of the Shanghai academic ranking of world universities', Scientometrics (2007) 72(1):25.