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UniMelb vicechancellor Duncan Maskell . Photo : NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie
Despite the very serious challenges of the past 12 months , the university has continued to perform at an incredibly high level .
THE World University Rankings
UniMelb tops Australian list again , 12 local unis make global top 200 .
By Conor Burke
The influential Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2022 have been released , with 12 Australian Universities making the top 200 .
The rankings take in over 1,600 institutions across 99 countries and is collated using 13 performance indicators that measure an institution ’ s performance across four areas : teaching , research , knowledge transfer and international outlook .
The University of Oxford took the top spot for the sixth consecutive year , followed by California Institute of Technology , Harvard , Stanford and Cambridge .
The US has the most universities on the list , with 183 , as well as the most in the top 200 with 57 , followed by the UK ( 28 ), Germany ( 22 ), Australia ( 12 ) and China ( 10 ).
Overall , 37 Aussie universities made the full list , with six making the top 100 .
UniMelb was again the top rated Australian university and the only one to make the top 50 , placing 33rd . It has held a spot in the 30s for the last decade .
“ While I acknowledge that rankings have a place in comparing the world ’ s universities , I am more proud of the fact that , despite the very serious challenges of the past 12 months , the university has continued to perform at an incredibly high level in the things that really matter : educating our students and doing excellent research that makes a difference in the world ," said University of Melbourne vicechancellor Duncan Maskell .
“ That in itself is quite remarkable given the unprecedented circumstances caused by the global pandemic ."
Monash University made the biggest move in the Australian top five , leapfrogging the University of Sydney ( dropping from 51 to 58 ) to fourth place and 57 overall .
The biggest Australian mover was UTS , which moved up the ladder from 160 to 143rd place .
The University of Canberra had a similar rise , placing at 170th worldwide , up from 184 in 2021 .
The THE rankings were heavily skewed towards universities that have published medical sciences research relating to Covid-19 over the past year . Nineteen institutions saw a notable rise in their citation impact score between the 2021 and 2022 editions of the ranking after publishing medical papers relating to Covid-19 .
The institutions with the biggest jump in citation impact score were Capital Medical University , Wenzhou Medical University and Wuhan University , all of which are in mainland China and saw a score increase of more than 30 points .
“ Research into the disease , and especially work on vaccines , was heavily funded and prioritised , and some papers have attracted more than 20,000 citations within a year of publication ,” said David Watkins , head of data science at THE .
“ Because THE uses a five-year window for publications , we believe that this effect will remain noticeable in the rankings for some time , and it is likely that other Covidrelated effects , such as reputational impact ( both positive and negative ) and income , will also become visible .”
THE analysed more than 108 million citations across over 14.4 million research publications and included survey responses from almost 22,000 scholars globally .
AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITY RANKINGS ( TOP 200 )
World University Rank 2022 / Australia Rank 2022 :
• 33 / 1 – University of Melbourne
• = 54 /= 2 – Australian National University
• = 54 /= 2 – The University of Queensland
• 57 / 4 – Monash University
• = 58 / 5 – University of Sydney
• 70 / 6 – UNSW Sydney
• 111 / 7 – University of Adelaide
• = 132 / 8 – The University of Western Australia
• = 143 / 9 – University of Technology Sydney
• = 170 / 10 – University of Canberra
• 192 / 11 – Macquarie University
• = 193 / 12 – Queensland University of Technology
WORLD TOP FIVE Rank 2022 / Rank 2021 :
• 1 / 1 – University of Oxford
• = 2 / 4 – California Institute of Technology
• = 2 / 3 – Harvard
• 4 / 2 – Stanford
• = 5 / 6 – University of Cambridge
• = 5 / 5 – MIT ■
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