THE 2024 Rankings pose important questions for Australian Universities

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024 have been released, and it includes 1,904 universities across 108 countries and regions.

According to THE, the table is based on a new WUR 3.0 methodology, which includes 18 calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across five areas: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry, and international outlook.

This year’s ranking analysed over 134 million citations across 16.5 million research publications and included survey responses from 68,402 scholars globally. Overall, 411,789 datapoints were collected from more than 2,673 institutions that submitted data.

The Results

No surprise at the top end of town:

1. University of Oxford
2. Stanford University
3. MIT
4. Harvard University
5. University of Cambridge
6. Princeton University
7. California Institute of Technology
8. Imperial College London
9. University of California, Berkeley
10. Yale University

In Australia:

37 University of Melbourne (34)*

54 Monash University (44)

60 The University of Sydney (54)

67 Australian National University (62)

70 The University of Queensland (53)

84 UNSW Sydney (71)

=111 The University of Adelaide (88)

=143 The University of Western Australia (=131)

148 University of Technology Sydney (133)

180 Macquarie University (175)

*(2023 result)

Australia Drops in THE

While the composition of the top 10 in Australia remains the same, some movement has occurred between the top 10. Notably, The University of Queensland drops from 3 in 2023 to 5 in 2024.

Of more concern is that each Australian University in the Australian top 10 has dropped place, with no single institution being elevated.

According to Caitlin Cassidy from the Guardian Australia “Australia’s top universities have tumbled in Times Higher Education’s (THE) 2024 global rankings, prompting a “red light warning” for the country’s tertiary sector.

Almost all of Australia’s top 10 universities dropped places in this year’s ranking, with just one institution remaining in the top 50 and six in the top 100.” She said.

Scratching of the Head

The Koala is not a data scientist, nor does it have a PhD in global rankings methodology however, if you think the THE rankings on Australian institutions were unexpected, you may just be right. When compared to the QS ranking, Australian institutions fare much better.

The top of the pops in QS, the University of Melbourne, ranking inside the top 15 globally, while The University of Western Australia does twice as well in QS as it does in the THE – 72 compared to 143.

Australia’s top 10 as follows:

Food for Thought

In a story by Jordan Baker in the SMH back in 2020 Prof. Brian Schmidt, outgoing Vice-Chancellor at the Australian National University  is quoted as saying, “Everyone says [rankings] don’t matter, but they do.”

“They drive students to you, they hold up your prestige in community and governments. It’s a shame they really aren’t very good.

“I think most vice-chancellors, certainly around the world that I know, agree with me. They really do worry about the distortionary effect on our missions and the choices we make.” He says.

He’s right.

People look at rankings, they drive behaviour and they do matter.

With such a chasm opening between rankings scores it isn’t beyond belief that institutions will now pick and choose the ranking that best suits them.

It’s started already.

 The University of Sydney who are hosting the THE World Academic Summit at the moment, said “The University of Sydney is ranked 60^th in the world in the latest Times Higher Education World University 2024 rankings.”

Going on to point out later in the same release.

“The University ranked equal 19th globally in the highly regarded 2024 QS World University Rankings,  jumping 22 places from last year.”

We await the 2025 ranking season.