Australia's Best Universities

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 rankings of Aussie universities
- The THES rankings of Aussie universities
The results: Australia's best universities…
- …according to the SJTU rankings
- …according to the THES rankings

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 University	49th	53rd	56th	54th	57th
University of Melbourne	92	82	82	78	79
University of Queensland	102-151	101-152	101-152	102-150	102-150
University of Sydney	102-151	101-152	101-152	102-150	102-150
University of Western Australia	—	153-201	153-202	102-150	102-150
University of Adelaide	201-250	202-301	203-300	201-300	151-202
University of New South Wales	152-200	153-201	153-202	151-200	151-202
Macquarie University	300-350	302-403	203-300	201-300	202-304
Monash University	152-200	202-301	203-300	201-300	203-304
Flinders University of South Australia	—	404-502	401-500	401-500	305-402
University of Newcastle	351-400	302-403	301-400	301-400	305-402
James Cook University	401-450	—	—	401-500	403-510
La Trobe University	401-450	404-502	401-500	301-400	403-510
Murdoch University	—	404-502	401-500	401-500	403-510
University of New England	—	—	—	401-500	403-510
University of Tasmania	351-400	302-403	401-500	401-500	403-510
University of Wollongong	—	—	—	—	403-510
University of the Sunshine Coast	152-200	—	—	—	—

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.

University	2004	2005	2006	2007
Australian National University	16	23	16	16
University of Melbourne	22	19	22	27
University of Sydney	40	38	35	31
University of Queensland	49	40	45	33
Monash University	33	34	38	43
University of New South Wales	36	40	41	44
University of Adelaide	56	80	105	62
University of Western Australia	96	80	111	64
Macquarie University	68	67	82	168
Queensland University of Technology	—	118	192	195
University of Wollongong	—	—	196	199
RMIT	55	82	146	200
Curtin University of Technology	76	101	156	—
University of Technology, Sydney	113	87	—	—
La Trobe University	142	98	—	—
University of Newcastle	—	127	—	—
University of South Australia	—	154	—	—
University of Tasmania	151	166	—	—

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