QS rankings: More ups than downs in our QS rankings

The majority of Australian unis rose in the global top 50 ranking — except one which slid five spots.

ANU was the only institution in the Australian top 10 to fall. Picture: iStock

The Australian National University still leads the country in the annual QS World University Rankings but has fallen by five rankings to 29th overall, while 24 of the nation’s 35 universities measured in the 2020 rankings ­recorded an improvement.

ANU was the only institution in the Australian top 10 to fall, with eight rising in the ranks and Sydney steady at 42. The University of Melbourne was second in the nation, ranking 38 overall, up one, and was also Australia’s most academically reputable university, ranking 15th overall. A survey of 44,000 employers also rated Melbourne as the most desirable Australian hiring destination, and it was 21st overall.

MORE: Research surge lifts the nation back into top 10

The list produced by global higher education consultancy QS Quacquarelli Symonds ranks 1000 universities on academic reputation, graduate employability, staff-student ratio, research performance, employer reputation and internationalisation. Commentary on the results attributed Australia’s good performance to consistent improvements in academic reputation (25 recorded rises, eight fell); citations per faculty (28 up, seven down); and international student ratio (26 up, nine down).

 

However, 31 recorded a worsening in staff-student ratio and 23 recorded a worse year-on-year performance for employer reputation.

QS director of research Ben Sowter said it was unsurprising that “students wishing to study in an Anglophone nation have turned towards Australia”, given its excellent quality of life and highly reputable institutions. Mr Sowter said the rate at which international student recruitment had occurred was “striking even in the context of the current global political climate”.

But he said “those invested in the sector should avoid complacency” given “significant and near-uniform drops” in the faculty-student ratio indicator.

“It is imperative that Australia endeavours to continue expanding its teaching capacity to meet demand that is likely to continue increasing. Results from our academic survey — the world’s largest of its kind — suggest that the global academic community currently rates the Australian system very highly,” he said.

“There is every potential for this trend to continue if it is felt that Australia has placed teaching provision at the heart of its higher education strategy. This is all the more so given that our results also show that the attractiveness of the UK and US is dwindling.”

Of the US’s 157 universities, 126 experienced a drop in their international student ratio indicator — and overall US institutions dropped an average of 16 places. In the UK, 51 of its 84 universities dropped on the same indicator.

In the rest of the world, Massachusetts Institute of Technology topped the rankings for the eighth consecutive year. However, the US turned in its worst performance on record, with only 16 per cent of its universities improving their rank.

China now has 19 of the world’s top 200 research universities compared with 12 in 2016, and its Tsinghua University was 16th. Asia’s top performers were the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University (joint 11th).