Australia's Best Universities

top rule

The Good Oil

The first to attempt some sort of quantitatively based ranking of the entire world's universities was that of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University(SJTU), 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, which is all to the good.

“SJTU vs THES”

Irked that some parvenus in a supposed–Third World nation had deigned to pass judgement on the First World, the well-respected The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) in the United Kingdom came up with its own Top 200 list of the world's best universities.

The Italians, feeling left out of this Anglo-Sino rivalry, riposted with their own studies at Webometrics. When we know more about them, we'll get back to you.

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? Since no one else has put their hands up to do the task, the SJTU and THES rankings stand as the only benchmarks we can use. You can read a statistical comparison of the two here.

Contents

The rival rankings

The SJTU ranks Australian universities

When SJTU's rankings first appeared, the senior management at the University of Sydney sat up in their chairs. This university is one of Australia's oldest, established as an Antipodean Oxford 150 years ago. All well and fine when your function is to reproduce the colonial upper-class. Not today: Australian universities have to produce results, not blue-bloods, to rake in the dough.

The University launched a campaign to become first in the country (Australia); fifth in the region (Asia) and 40th in the world by 2010; on SJTU's ranking. They called it the 1:5:40 strategy. What happened? They couldn't get better than 102nd by 2007. So they shifted the goal-posts to the much more comfy THES system, and voila! goal achieved..

The THES ranks Australian universities

The THES ranks the Australian universities much higher than SJTU does. We are more than dubious. The 2007 THES ratings places one Australian university as better than every university in Europe and every university in Japan. We don't think so.

The results: Australia's best universities

We list here the rankings of the Australian universities from both SJTU and THES, for all the years available (which isn't that many).

We include every Australian university they listed in any of their annual ranking charts. If you can't find your university here, you might want to rethink your educational choice.

As you can see, the lists are quite disparate: many universities on one list are not on the other, let alone their relative position.

The SJTU rankings

SJTU ranks the top 500 of the world's universities.

We've read a detailed defence of SJTU'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.

SJTU 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 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Australian National University49th53rd56th54th57th
University of Melbourne9282827879
University of Queensland102-151101-152101-152102-150102-150
University of Sydney102-151101-152101-152102-150102-150
University of Western Australia153-201153-202102-150102-150
University of Adelaide201-250202-301203-300201-300151-202
University of New South Wales152-200153-201153-202151-200151-202
Macquarie University300-350302-403203-300201-300202-304
Monash University152-200202-301203-300201-300203-304
Flinders University of South Australia404-502401-500401-500305-402
University of Newcastle351-400302-403301-400301-400305-402
James Cook University401-450401-500403-510
La Trobe University401-450404-502401-500301-400403-510
Murdoch University404-502401-500401-500403-510
University of New England401-500403-510
University of Tasmania351-400302-403401-500401-500403-510
University of Wollongong403-510
University of the Sunshine Coast152-200

The THES rankings

THES ranks the top 200 of the world's universities, down to the very rank. We are a bit dubious of that precision: but what do we know? The table below lists every Australian university that has appeared in their rankings.

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

University2004200520062007
Australian National University16231616
University of Melbourne22192227
University of Sydney40383531
University of Queensland49404533
Monash University33343843
University of New South Wales36404144
University of Adelaide568010562
University of Western Australia968011164
Macquarie University686782168
Queensland University of Technology118192195
University of Wollongong196199
RMIT5582146200
Curtin University of Technology76101156
University of Technology, Sydney11387
La Trobe University14298
University of Newcastle127
University of South Australia154
University of Tasmania151166

1. ‘Academic ranking of world universities’, Scientometrics (2005) 64:1, p 101.

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