QS University ranking – ANU soundly beats University of Melbourne
The Australian National University (ANU) has once again beaten the University of Melbourne as Australia’s best university, according to the 2016 QS World University Rankings. While dropping three places from 2015, ANU’s ranking of 22nd is soundly ahead of UoM’s, which retained its place of 42nd from the previous year.
Five Australian universities made it into the top 100, with the University of Sydney (46), the University of NSW (49), the University of Queensland (51), and Monash University (65) rounding up the rankings.
Globally, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has for a fifth consecutive year topped the list, followed by two other US universities, Stanford and Harvard.
Every year, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) compiles a comprehensive ranking of the top universities in the world. The QS rankings are based on a score of 100, which is made up of academic reputation, employer reputation, research, staff-to-student ratio, international staff, students and exchanges and proportion of staff with a PhD.
In the past few years, the influx of international students has given new meaning to these rankings. With many prospective students now relying on rankings such as the QS University Rankings to choose their place of education. The economic benefits to be had from these students mean that as Tracey McNicol from ANU’s Planning and Performance Management division explains, “every uni is clamouring to be high up in the rankings.”
The QS result comes in contrast to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Ranking of Work Universities list, released last month, which saw the University of Melbourne ranked as the best university in Australia, and provoked an all staff email from Vice Chancellor Glyn Davis.
With the Times Higher Education World University Rankings coming out later this month, the University of Melbourne has an opportunity to regain its much-publicised position as Australia’s best university.