As Tim Pitman and colleagues demonstrate, ranking universities by equity-outcomes can come up with all sorts of results – (CMM February 5).

To extend the point, participants in the Pitman-project, from the Australian Council for Educational Research, have published more ranking outcomes – assessing three key equity outcomes, access and participation, first-year experience and graduate outcomes.

When all measures are weighted equally the top ten performers are universities with strong enrolments on equity indicators (in descending order); UNE, Western Sydney U, Federation U, CQU, Uni Newcastle, Southern Cross U, Murdoch U, U Tas, Charles Sturt U, and James Cook U. When participation rates have a heavier weighting, while positions on the top-ten move but overall the list stays much the same.

However, there are interesting variations when graduate outcomes is the preferred variable, QUT is sixth and Uni Queensland tenth.

But the list is significantly different when graduate outcome are weighted up, with Group of Eight universities being the first five for equity performance; Uni Sydney, Uni Melbourne, Monash U, UNSW, ANU, followed by; Western Sydney U, SCU, Uni Newcastle, UNE and QUT.

“When heavier weighting is given to student retention, universities with smaller numbers of relatively high achieving equity group students are more prominent at the top of the rankings,” the ACER team points out.