Aus and Hong Kong world number one for uni performance

UNSW announces its “real deal” in rankings for 2022

The new issue of UNSW’s Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities  includes GDP and research development national expenditures, “to determine country level performance and return on investment.”

On this basis, the new ARTU reports, Switzerland has the most top 200 universities per capita but Australia and Hong Kong “come out on top” when rankings are adjusted for GDP and R&D. Australia is third in the world for universities in the top 10p 100.

Overall, there are 12 Australian  universities in the global top 200, equal fourth with China, behind the US (53), UK (26) andb (13).

no surprises at the top end:  The Group of Eight leads the locals. Uni Melbourne is 27th in the world, followed by Uni Queensland (42), Uni Sydney (46), ANU (49), Monash U (50), UNSW (53), UWA (85) and Uni Adelaide (90). This is a big move for Uni Adelaide, up from 102 last year.

Aus universities in the global second 100 are, UTS (145) Macquarie U (170), Curtin U (190) and Uni Wollongong (195).

how: ARTU ranks universities by the sum of their individual score in the THE, QS and ARWU rankings.

“The ARTU rank of an institution is less sensitive to the anomalies in the performance of any one ranking, thus providing a more realistic position of a university in comparison to its peers,” UNSW states.

and why?: “Marked disparities in the chief ranking systems can now be tackled via a systematic meta-analytical approach to track performance. ARTU offers a single number scoreboard for comparing the world’s top universities as well as an academic Big Mac Index for international comparisons, UNSW’s Nicholas Fisk and Daniel Owens explained in CMM last year (November 15 2021).

What it means: UNSW DVC R Nicholas Fisk points to China’s continuing rise, with an  extra university in the ARTU top 100, two more in the first two hundred and an additional four in the top 300.

And he points to the rise and rise of Paris-Sarclay University, the creation of mergers in 2015, which has risen 90 places in two years. This may be “instructive” in terms of the proposed SA merger, Professor Fisk suggests.