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A world of good
ANU leads the way as Australian institutions claim high places in latest international university subjects rankings.
Australian National University has once again affirmed its position as the nation’ s top internationally ranked university. New rankings list ANU in the world’ s top 10 institutions across four separate subjects.
The latest standings released by international university ratings agency QS rated ANU’ s agriculture and forestry field and its politics and international studies program seventh in the world. The history program was ranked ninth, whilst the development studies program ranked 10th.
The QS ratings assessed various subject programs taught at about 900 universities worldwide. Boston’ s MIT was the top performer, ranking first in 11 subjects. It was closely followed by local rival Harvard, which ranked first in 10 subjects.
Meanwhile, ANU beat out the University of Melbourne, which ranked in the subject top 10 lists twice – fifth for education and eighth for law – and the University of Sydney, which ranked 10th in the field of education.
Other high-achieving universities included fellow Go8 members the universities of Queensland and NSW – both of which were on multiple individual subject top 50 lists.
ANU vice-chancellor professor Ian Young said that whilst“ rankings can be an inexact science and ratings can fluctuate” the latest global subject rankings had demonstrated his university had continued to“ lead the way for Australian university education and research”.
“ ANU is committed to national and international excellence and measures the quality of its education and research against the best in the world,” Young said.“ The outstanding results are a testament to the world-class academics and researchers at ANU, and the high quality of our dedicated students.” n
Please see“ Teaching Titan”, page 30.
OK, again, ATARs aren’ t everything
Yet another study finds other factors are better indicators of higher education success.
An analysis of first-year student academic results at Victoria University has added weight to the argument that ATAR scores are a poor indicator of early success in higher education.
The report was released recently by the university’ s Victoria Institute for Strategic Economic Studies( VISES) with support from Curtin University’ s National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education( NCSEHE). The analysis found that whilst ATARs had some bearing on academic outcomes in higher education, overall they were a poor indicator and should be considered only in combination with other factors.
Based on an analysis of 19,904 firstyear students at VU between 2009 and 2013, researchers found factors such as socioeconomic status( SES) and whether the student was from an English-speaking background, as well as gender, age and their school’ s ranking were all key elements in predicting higher education success.
The report also found that students from lower-SES backgrounds often outperformed students with the comparable ATARs to students from higher-SES backgrounds when allowing for various characteristics of disadvantage.
Victoria Institute senior research fellow Dr George Messinis said despite the report’ s finding that, on average, students with higher ATARs achieve higher marks in firstyear courses, many high-ATAR students also achieved low marks. Meanwhile, many low-ATAR students achieved high marks, he said.
“ This suggests that more sophisticated approaches are needed to determine students’ readiness for university study,” Messinis said.“ Many low-SES students face other disadvantages, associated for example with [ non-English speaking backgrounds ], which means they need additional support to succeed in their studies.”
VU vice-chancellor professor Peter Dawkins said the report’ s findings showed that whilst it remained important for universities to provide support for their lower-ATAR students,“ we need to take into account much more than student ATARs in designing our strategies. Just over half of Victoria University’ s first-year students enter directly from high school. For the significant number entering from a VET award course or from another institution, performance since leaving school may be more important in securing admission than initial ATAR scores.
“ Equal attention should be given to the many things that determine student success.” n
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