‘Running fast just to stand still’: Where do WA universities rank globally?

The University of Western Australia has dropped 12 spots in one of the world’s most prestigious university rankings list, in a trend followed by all Australian universities sitting in the top 200.

UWA sits at equal 143rd in the world for 2024 according to Times Higher Education, and is the eighth-highest ranked university in Australia.

Curtin University is sitting between 201 and 250 globally, and 12th in Australia, while ECU and Murdoch are both in the 351 to 400 benchmark.

Murdoch University has climbed up the rankings significantly, sitting in the 401 to 500 benchmark in last year’s rankings list, while ECU and Curtin remained in the same brackets.

Overall, 37 Australian universities made the ranking, which is based on 18 performance indicators (up from 13 last year) grouped into five pillars: teaching, research quality, research environment, international outlook and industry.

Times Higher Education chief global affairs officer Phil Baty said Australia had some of the world’s best universities, but this year’s rankings drop for the top 200 highlighted “serious warning signs”.

Three WA universities have dropped down in the global rankings, but Murdoch University has broken the trend. Credit: Cameron Myles/ iStock

“While Australia is one of the world’s leading university sectors for attracting international talent and collaboration, the relative isolation of the country during the pandemic is showing up in the data, to detrimental effect on universities’ ranking positions,” he said.

“Real attention is needed to ensure Australia continues to be open to international talent, which includes the right policy incentives as competition for international talent heats up with possible shifts in the market.

“In addition, while the rankings show Australia has historically very high levels of research quality, current figures show a relative under-investment in research which sends a clear red-light warning.”

Baty said the rankings showed “you have to run very fast even just to stand still” in an increasingly competitive global higher education sector.

Murdoch University research and innovation deputy vice chancellor Professor Peter Eastwood said it was pleasing to see the university had advanced in the rankings, given the effort put into research capability and educational expertise.

“The establishment of our four research institutes has been key to delivering on our commitment to translational research in the areas of health, food security, sustainability, and First Nations,” he said.

“We have attracted internationally renowned scholars ... and we also actively work with government to advance research opportunities and outputs through partnerships such as the CSIRO-Murdoch-Industry Bioplastics Innovation Hub at our South Street campus.”

But he said it would be hard to find a university that would not welcome more research investment from government.

“Murdoch supports the recent call by Universities Australia for the federal government to increase its support for university-based research and for PhD student stipends,” he said.

“Universities around the world are facing dynamic challenges and Murdoch is no different, [but] isolation isn’t necessarily a disadvantage and being located in Western Australia provides us with unique opportunities and perspectives.”

Higher education policy expert Andrew Norton said there was no doubt Australian university research remained affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Australia is more reliant on profits from international students than other countries to fund its research,” he said.

“Although the government did provide an extra $1 billion in research funding in 2021 to offset lost international student revenue that still left a very difficult 2022, with most universities reporting a net loss for the year, although UWA and ECU were exceptions.”

Norton said Australian universities had all fallen in another ranking system which was purely based on research indicators.

He also said the Times Higher Education rankings had significant subjective elements, as they included reputation indexes.

“The people responding to these surveys are unlikely to have more than general impressions of most universities,” he said.

“For what it’s worth, I think the rankings get too much attention.

“They support the cultural preference in universities for research over teaching, and within research for topics with an international angle that is more likely to get cited by academics overseas than topics relevant mainly to Australia and our region.”

Curtin University Vice-Chancellor Professor Harlene
Hayne said the university also ranked 53 in the world and second nationally in the international outlook category.

“Curtin currently has the seventh-highest number of international students in Australia. We are proud of our efforts to recruit the best minds globally as a critical element to our success and to delivering the best possible student experience,” she said.

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