policy & reform though it is hard to rank education,” Byrne says.“ One issue that universities in Australia and the UK need to remember is that our friends in America have started to get their act together in the worldwide rankings surveys and have become more competitive.
“ It’ s not only Australian university rankings that have dropped; so have those in the UK, as American universities filled 15 of the top 20 places. That said, Australian universities still hold up very well on the international scale.
“ But it’ s important to remember that there are a variety of ranking systems around the world and their criteria vary.”
Last year, for the second year in a row, global CEOs and recruiters polled by The New York Times voted Monash the best university in Australia from which to hire graduates.
The annual survey by The New York Times placed Monash 32nd globally, up from 47th in 2011. The leap of 15 places also makes Monash the leader for the Oceania region and the only Victorian university to make the list of the top 100 higher education institutions.
“ What we need to remember,” Byrne says,“ is that the top universities around the world attract students for a multitude of reasons such as undertaking a better educational experience, the prestige associated with that university, its brand, and its employability after graduating.
“ Australia has the added advantage of being a safe place to live with a strong economy and stable government, with the attraction of living one’ s life here after finishing your studies.”
But where the difference may lie in the future is in the funding and the ability of Australian universities to attract revenue in addition to federal government support and student fees.
A quick look at Stanford University, which ranked fourth in the THE index, shows that it had received $ 18.7 billion in endowments as of August 2013, as well as 5100 externally sponsored research projects with a $ 1.35 billion total budget set aside for research.
It also has a long history of working closely with industry to pioneer landmark advances in scientific research dating back five decades. In the 1960s it built two enormously significant scientific facilities: a two-mile-long linear accelerator, part of the SLAC National Laboratory, and the Dish, a 150-foot-diameter radio telescope, a joint venture between Stanford Research Institute( SRI) and the US Air Force.
Of course, it can also take part of the credit for a smallish invention known as the internet, while Google, the web’ s most popular search engine and one of the world’ s most influential companies, got its start at Stanford when graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed their page rank algorithm in the 1990s.
Before them, alumni Jerry Yang and David Filo founded Yahoo.
Stanford’ s budget for 2013-14 is $ 4.8 billion.“ We’ re in good health financially as a university,” Provost John Etchemendy says.“ We have a strong salary program and we have funded the highest school priorities.”
Funding for need-based scholarships has increased from $ 75.2 million in 2007- 08 to $ 131.7 million in 2013-14, including an additional $ 7.3 million in general funds being provided in the 2013-14 budget. There has been a 5.7 per cent grown in staff headcount since 2012.
Stanford expects to spend $ 254.1 million on student financial aid for undergraduate and graduate students in 2013-14, from all funding sources. It continues to employ a need-blind undergraduate admission policy, admitting qualified US students without regard to their ability to pay and meeting each family’ s demonstrated financial need.
“ Sustaining the excellence of the university depends on the quality of our students, and we’ ve worked to keep a Stanford education accessible to the best students,” John Hennessy, Stanford University president, says.“ Stanford is one of only a few need-blind universities that meet a family’ s full demonstrated need. As a result of our commitment, the cost of attending Stanford has effectively gone down in recent years.” campusreview. com. au | 13