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Australian universities emerge as
world beaters
The University of Melbourne and Australian National University are among five Australian universities making the top ten in a new discipline-based international table.
The Quacquarelli Symonds( QS) World University Rankings by Subject places Melbourne as the leading Australian institution in 15 of the 30 subjects rated, while Australian National University led in nine disciplines.
Melbourne showed critics that Australia is in fact performing well in the faculty of education, ranking third in the world top ten. The university was just ahead of Monash( 6); University of Sydney( 8); and Queensland University( 10).
Harvard Graduate School of Education took out the top spot in the subject, followed by the University of Cambridge in second place.
Melbourne University’ s dean of the graduate school of education, professor Field Rickards, said the ranking is an“ endorsement” of their work across research, teaching and engagement.
“ I believe this also reflects on our innovative graduate programs, which are attracting very high quality candidates,” Rickards said.
The University of Melbourne made the global top ten in five other subjects including law, linguistics, psychology, accounting and finance and medicine.
Melbourne came fifth in law, beating Sydney which took tenth place. They were followed by UNSW( 12), Monash( 13) and ANU( 14).
ANU made the top ten in five subjects, coming in sixth for politics and international studies, history( 7), and philosophy( 10). In geography, ANU rated 8, bettering Melbourne, which rated twelfth. But Melbourne beat ANU in linguistics( 6) and ANU( 9).
Australian universities also scored high in psychology, with three top-ten positions
4 | May 2013 including: University of Melbourne( 7), University of Queensland( 9) and the University of New South Wales( 10), with Sydney University following closely behind at 14.
Other strong subjects for the nation’ s universities were accounting and finance with Melbourne at( 7), Sydney( 9) and UNSW( 12). Monash University beat out all other Australian universities in pharmacy / pharmacology, coming seventh in the world.
The University of Queensland also had a strong showing, particularly in agriculture and environmental sciences where it came first when ranked against all other Australian universities.
In light of the rankings, UQ vicechancellor professor Peter Hoj called for governments to recognise universities as a“ great asset” to the country.
“ We need to protect and grow the global opportunities that our universities are opening for Australia …” said Hoj.
Ben Sowter, Quacquarelli Symonds’ head of research, said,“ The shift in global economic power is transforming the international higher education landscape”, adding that countries such as Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore are emerging as“ genuine challengers” to the“ traditional elite”.
Globally, Harvard University ranks number one in ten disciplines, ahead of Massachusetts Institute of Technology( 7), University of California, Berkeley( 4), Oxford( 4), Cambridge( 3), Imperia( 1) and University of California Davis( 1).
The QS Rankings, now in its third year, rated 2,858 universities worldwide choosing the world’ s top 200 universities for 30 different disciplines.
The rankings are based on a survey of some 70,000 academics and graduate employers, as well as research citations.
According to the QS website, the rankings are designed to help students determine where to study. n