Australian universities excel in Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings
The much-anticipated 2011 Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities have been released, delivering a few surprises to Australian institutions.
The University of Melbourne took out the top Australian place, ranking 60th, which is two places above its 2010 result. The Australian National University — which has been the highest ranked Australian university every year since the commencement of the rankings in 2003 — slid down 11 places to 70.
Other highly ranked institutions were the University of Queensland (ranked 86th) and the University of Sydney (96th).
A total of 19 Australian institutions placed in the top 500, which is a new record for Australia in the history of these rankings.
Simon Marginson, from Melbourne University's Centre for the Study of Higher Education, said that, though the results are encouraging, Australia’s performance is likely to be a reflection of university’s allocating larger proportions of their income to research, which may have a negative impact on teaching quality.
While it is recognised that university ranking systems may not be exact, the Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings are among the most respected and take into account indicators such as research performance, the number of highly cited researches and the number of articles published in Science and Nature journals.
Internationally, the trend of US and UK institutions taking out the top spots continued, with Harvard receiving the number one ranking, followed by Stanford; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the University of California, Berkeley; and Cambridge.
You can view a range of university ratings on this site, including our own comprehensive ratings of each Australian university on key criteria such as ‘Graduate satisfaction’, ‘Getting a Job’, ‘Graduate salaries’ and ‘Teaching quality’.
The 2011 edition of The Good Universities Guide, containing the latest university ratings, has also been released and can be purchased in newsagents nationally.
AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES RANKING IN TOP 500 (IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER):
- Australian National University
- Curtin University
- Flinders University
- Griffith University
- James Cook University
- La Trobe University
- Macquarie University
- Monash University
- Swinburne University of Technology
- University of Adelaide
- University of Newcastle
- University of New South Wales
- University of Melbourne
- University of Queensland
- University of Sydney
- University of Tasmania
- University of Technology, Sydney
- University of Western Australia
- University of Wollongong
