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Australia has been warned that it is not “out of the woods” despite a strong showing in the latest global league table of universities.
Twelve Australian institutions have advanced their standing in this year’s iteration of the 糖心Vlog World University Rankings, marking a general improvement that bucked a trend of Western stagnation.
While the universities of Melbourne?and Sydney?both moved up the ladder, to 37th?and joint 53rd?place respectively, the biggest improvers were institutions normally ranked outside the top 500. Central Queensland, Southern Cross, Sunshine Coast and Charles Sturt universities all ascended by one ranking band, while the University of Notre Dame Australia rose two bands to break into the global top 1,000.
The solid results in Australia’s tail contrasted with a general decline among lower-ranked performers in the UK and particularly the US, which recorded its smallest-ever share of top-500 institutions, after 25 notched their lowest-ever positions.
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They lost ground to several fast-improving East and South-east Asian contenders. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and China’s Fudan, Zhejiang?and Shanghai Jiao Tong universities are all now firmly entrenched in the top 50, joining local heavyweights Tsinghua, Peking, the National University of Singapore, the University of Tokyo and the University of Hong Kong.
Phil Baty, THE’s chief global affairs officer, said Australia’s efforts to “buck the Western trend” had put it in a “unique” position. “There’s a real opportunity for Australia, and indeed New Zealand, to capitalise on the shifting dynamics of global higher education – to strengthen its international talent attraction and to increase collaboration with thriving South-east Asian institutions and universities in Asia more widely.”
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Australia’s performance also contrasted with its results last year, when almost half of the sector lost ground. Angel Calderon, director of strategic insights at RMIT University, said this partly reflected a correction from earlier methodological changes?that determine how researcher numbers are counted.
But Calderon said Australia was still suffering the financial after-effects of Covid-19, with a dozen institutions still in deficit by the end of last year, constraining their research output. The federal government’s crackdown on international education would further restrain research metrics in the data analysed in future rankings rounds.
“We are going to see a weakening in the standing of some institutions,” Calderon warned. “Not much separates one institution from the other [in a sector where] pretty much everyone is teaching the same things.”
He said Australia’s improvements had occurred mainly in the top-tier institutions – particularly the research-intensive institutions of Sydney and Melbourne, each garnering well over A$1 billion (?490 million) a year from international students’ fees – and in lower-ranked institutions which were “coming from a lower base”.
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They had registered the most notable advances in scores across several of the core “pillars” that contribute to the rankings. Notre Dame was Australia’s biggest improver in teaching, Charles Sturt in research environment and Central Queensland in international outlook.
Other Australian success stories included the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), which climbed nine places and broke the Group of Eight’s longstanding stranglehold on the rankings’ Antipodean leaderboard by leapfrogging the University of Western Australia into equal 145th. Macquarie University, which improved by 12 places to joint 166th, finished ahead of Adelaide University – the newly created merger of the universities of Adelaide and South Australia – which debuted at joint 176th.
The Adelaide merger was motivated partly by a desire for better rankings. But Calderon said at least three years’ data would be needed to underpin a rankings lift. Adelaide’s “greater volume” of students, resources, publications and income should theoretically produce a rankings boost, as had occurred with French mergers. “The question in my mind…is how sustainable that improvement will be, seen over multiple years.”
He said institutions attracting bad press over restructures, such as the Australian National University and UTS, could expect future hits to their reputation scores and overall rankings. “The issues around institutional governance – all the sorts of things that have been in the newspapers – [are] resonating externally. People are saying, ‘what’s going on?’”
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The University of Sydney, Australia’s oldest and richest institution, has improved its standing by eight places this year. Calderon said its extraordinary international earnings, which exceeded A$1.6 billion last year, could help bankroll “a challenge to Melbourne’s top position”.
Melbourne said its “near perfect scores” in five metrics, including research excellence and research influence, had helped entrench its status as Australia’s only top-50 institution. “The achievement separates the university from its nearest Australian competitor by 16 places, cementing its position as the nation’s representative among the world’s best universities,” said vice-chancellor Emma Johnston.
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