The 2020* QS World University Rankings report Australian unis are pretty much where they were last year

Top performers: Seven local institution are in the global top 11, same as last year ANU is = 29 (last year 24), Uni Melbourne 38 (39), Uni Sydney (42) (42), UNSW 43 (45), Uni Queensland 47 (48), Monash U 58 (59) and UWA 86 (91).

Overall US unis account for half the world top 20, with the others being five from the UK, two from Switzerland, the two Singapore unis, and Tsinghau U.

Who’s well up: At the pointy end, where competition is toughest, the University of Adelaide improves eight places to 106, UTS is up 20 to 140, Uni Newcastle lifts seven spots to 207, Uni Wollongong improves six to 212.

Other substantial improvers include Curtin U, which lifts 20 places, to 230 and Deakin U up 38 places to 271. Flinders U is up 54 spots, to 424.

The University of Canberra makes a great leap forward, moving from the 601-650 band, to =484.

But how: QS uses six indicators, ratios of international staff and students, research impact and staff-student ratios. The other two are surveys of 130 000 (mainly) academics and employers.

* apparently it’s a social media metric thing