NEWS
campusreview.com.au
Local reputations slip
Australian unis take a tumble down the global rankings for best image.
By Patrick Avenell
O
nly three Australian universities
have been included in the Times
Higher Education (THE) rankings
for World Reputation in 2016. Last year,
there were five. Eight institutions from the
US, along with the Oxbridge pair, make up
the Top 10.
The University of Melbourne, at joint
49, the Australian National University
in the unspecified 51–60 band and the
University of Sydney in the similarly
nebulous 61–70 clutch were the only local
inclusions. The University of Queensland
(81–90 in the previous year) and Monash
(91–100) have slipped out of the 100.
THE’s World Reputation Rankings are
based on a survey of 10,323 handpicked
academics from 133 countries. The
survey was conducted between January
and March 2016. By THE’s own admission,
these rankings can be fairly subjective,
though the continued domination of the
same American and British campuses
reveals that a small clutch of university
“superbrands” have emerged.
“But outside this tiny super group,”
THE rankings editor Phil Baty opined,
“the global higher education world is
changing, and some leading lights in
the US and UK, for example, household
names, have lost ground, while
universities in China, Hong Kong, Japan
and South Korea are all making progress.
We now have a Chinese university in the
world top 20 for the first time (Beijing’s
Tsinghua University), and another right
behind it in the top 30 (Peking University).”
“The university is pleased that it
remains the leading institution in
Australia on the THE reputation ranking
for the sixth consecutive year,” said
University of Melbourne acting vicechancellor professor Margaret Sheil. “This
consistency owes much to the hard work
of the wider university community in
producing work of a world-class standard.
“That this work has been recognised by
our peers at such a high level yet again is
testament to the quality of our staff and
students. We’re very proud to count them
as part of the Melbourne community.”
The major trend across the six years THE
has been surveying and ranking based on
reputation, Baty said, has been the rise of
Asia, which is more than simply a truism.
“The rise of Asia has become
something of a cliché in recent times,
but our evidence, from six massive global
surveys over six years, including the views
of more than 80,000 scholars, proves that
the balance of power in higher education
and research is slowly shifting from the
West to the East,” he said. ■
For the full list, go to campusreview.com.au
and search for ‘reputation rankings 2016’.
2016 TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION
WORLD REPUTATION RANKINGS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
Harvard (US)
MIT (US)
Stanford (US)
Cambridge (UK)
Oxford (UK)
University of California,
Berkeley (US)
Princeton (US)
Yale (US)
Columbia (US)
Caltech (US)
Chicago (US)
Tokyo (Japan)
UCLA (US)
Michigan (US)
Imperial College London (UK)
Penn (US)
Cornell (US)
Tsinghua (China)
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Zurich (Switzerland)
University College
London (UK)
AUSTRALIAN ENTRIES
(2015 position in brackets; *tied)
49.
51–60.
61–70.
n/a.
n/a.
University of Melbourne* (41)
Australian National University (51–60)
University of Sydney (51–60)
University of Queensland (81–90)
Monash (91–100)
5