Australia’s university sector appears to have taken a hit, with dozens of the country’s unis dropping in rank upon the release of the QS World University Rankings.
The results revealed that 25 Aussie universities had received a lower ranking than in previous years, with only two institutions — The University of Melbourne (UoM) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) — placing within the top 20 unis in the world.
While those two schools cracked the top 20, they both still fell in comparison to 2024, with UoM dropping from 13th to 19th and UNSW from 19th to 20th.
Some of the country’s top-tier unis departed the top 20 entirely, with the University of Sydney suffering the most significant fall from 18th last year to 25th in this most recent report.
In fact, the only Aussie institution to improve upon its score was Monash University, which climbed just one sport from 37th to 36th.
Elsewhere, The University of Technology, Sydney, Australian National University, The University of Queensland and Curtin University were among the other schools to place lower in the rankings than in previous years.
The ranking system is run by the global higher education specialist group Quacquarelli Symonds, and is based on key factors like academic and employer reputation, faculty-student ratio, sustainability and research output, among other metrics.
Speaking of the slip in global rankings, Angel Calderon — the director of strategic insights at RMIT and a member of the QS rankings advisory board — said the results are “a wake-up call to Australia” per The Guardian.
Calderon cited the key indicator of reputation as a particular area of concern, saying “organisational restructuring, staff movements [and] operational deficits” have contributed to the dip in “institutional perceptions”.
“The inconvenient truth is that reputation is an issue which continues to adversely impact Australian universities’ performance in global rankings,” Calderon added.
While the overall picture seems dire, Australia still ranked fifth globally for the proportion of universities ranked in the world’s top 100, so not all of your last-minute assignment hand-ins (and HECS debts) have gone to waste!
More broadly, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) maintained its spot in first place, followed by Imperial College London and Stanford University.
Word is still out on which uni has the best food court, but UTS Sydney alums have feasted on enough SushiHub to know exactly who’d come out on top.
Lead image: Sydney University/ Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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