“We get very fixated about university rankings that count for a couple of things, but don’t tell the whole picture,” Macquarie U VC S Bruce Dowton tells staff

“For me, renown is the whole story,” he adds, which is built on, um, rankings (just not those that are aggregated scores).

“Many parts of the university across humanities, arts and social sciences, as well as the STEM fields, are represented in the top 100 in the world. Globally, our philosophy department is the highest ranked department in this university,” Professor Dowton says.

While the VC did not specify which rankings, Macquarie U is in the global top 100 for six subjects in last month’s Academic Ranking of World Universities discipline list, (although the ARWU does not include a bunch of HASS subjects). UNSW has 38, Uni Sydney 26 and UTS nine.