Australian institutions have done well in the 2011-12 QS World University Rankings, with 17 institutions featured in the top 300.
The Group of Eight institutions led the way, with all members appearing in the top 100 and five in the top 50.
Australian National University remained the highest-ranked Australian institution, even though it fell six places to 26. University of Melbourne was in second place, rising to 31 globally.
QS vice-president John Molony said the results set Australian higher education among the leading systems in the world.
“For a small collective to represent 10 per cent of the total in the top 50-ranked institutions and 8 per cent in the top 100 is an excellent achievement,” he said.
The University of Western Australia was seventh out of Australian institutions, lifting its global ranking to 73. Curtin University was the only other WA institution to make the top 300, having risen to 258 this year.
The UK and US were heavily represented, dominating the top 16 spots with the University of Cambridge in first place followed by Harvard University.
The QS ranking is based on six indicators, including surveys of more than 33,000 global academics and 16,000 graduate employers.
“The millions of internationally mobile students who read the tables will clearly see that both groups, the professors and the bosses, rate Australian institutions highly,” Mr Molony said.
It is one of three prominent ranking systems globally, alongside the Academic Ranking of World Universities (sometimes called the ‘Shanghai Ranking’ from its compilation by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University) and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
The Shanghai Ranking, which is based significantly on science, research and academic citations in its assessment, included more Australian universities in its top-500 results, released last month.
However, the 19 institutions were ranked significantly lower, with University of Melbourne at 60, followed by ANU at 70 and UWA ranked fifth of Australian universities at 102.
Curtin was included in a bloc of universities ranked in the 400s, including most of its peers in the Australian Technology Network. It ranked Harvard first, while Cambridge came in fifth.
The Times World University rankings for 2011-12 will be released next month.
There are many other university rankings worldwide, and methods used vary widely with some times novel criteria.
G-factor for example ranks institutions according to web presence by counting the number of links from other universities’ websites.
