The ranking that Australian unis don’t like talking about

No Australian institution has ever made the list of the world’s top 100 innovative universities, and this year is no exception.

No Australian university has ever made the world’s top 100 innovative universities list.

In today’s Higher Ed Daily Brief: realities of ranking, support for PhD

Missing out

Here is the ranking list which our rankings focused universities would prefer not to mention — the 2018 Reuters Top 100 Most Innovative Universities. Not a single Australian institution makes the world’s top 100. In fact, no Australian university has ever made the list in the four years it’s been going. Reuters compiles it by taking the world’s top 600 or so universities and research groups (based on their research publications from 2011 to 2016) and then examining their performance in filing patents, and the success of those patents, including how many times they are cited by others. Other factors taken into account in the ranking include, how often research papers from a particular university are cited in patents, and the percentage of their papers which have a co-author from industry.

To do well in the Reuters ranking requires a broader and more complex set of achievements in research than doing well in three popular global rankings — Times Higher Education, QS and the Academic Ranking of World Universities. There is a sharper focus on originality and usefulness of research, and so far our universities have not broken through.

They do better in a subset of the Reuters Top 100 Innovative Universities Ranking which looks at Asia only. Earlier this year five Australian universities were named in this ranking. But even here Australian lags with 19 Japanese, 20 South Korean and 27 Chinese universities named on this list.

Doctorates for defence

The seven NSW universities in the Defence Innovation Network, backed by the NSW government and the state’s chief scientist and engineer, will put $230,000 into supporting 30 PhD students working in specialist, defence-linked areas. Working through the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute’s APR. Intern program, the students will be matched to the needs of NSW defence industry.

“These placements provide a powerful platform for NSW universities to complement specialist PhD training with industry experience and essential soft skills, while delivering real defence innovation solutions,” said the institute’s director, Geoff Prince.