For a second consecutive year,
Australian universities experienced a decline in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) for the second successive year – 17 went down in standing and seven went up.
The 2024 edition of the ARWU continues to list Harvard as the number one university in the world, awarding eight of the top 10 places to US institutions, with the remaining two coming from the UK.
A total of 24 Australian universities continue to be included in the top 500, with scores moderately increasing. Melbourne, Queensland, Sydney and the other Go8 unis remain Australia’s leading universities followed by a group of ATN universities.
Why Australia went down?
There are a combination of factors that influenced the downward movement; in part attributed to lower scores in the highly cited researcher indicator, published articles and per capita measures.
This year’s results for Australian universities do not bode well for the future. Our universities did not experience a decline between 2020 and 2022, but we are now seeing an acceleration of declining scores in the volume of published scholarly articles, including the share of articles in Nature and Science.
We are also seeing a decrease in the ability to retain and attract highly cited researchers. The combination of these factors is also influencing per capita measures.
Which institutions went up?
The ARWU publishes individual ranks for the top 100 institutions and the remainder are published in bands (e.g. 101-150, 151-200, 201-300 and so forth).
This means that most analysts go through the methodology and work out the estimated rank for all 1000 institutions included in the rank, establishing whether our institutions are in the top or bottom of a band.
The seven institutions which moved up in estimated rank are: Adelaide (151-200 band), Macquarie (201-300 band), Griffith and QUT (both moved up from 301-400 to 201-300 band), RMIT (301-400 band), Newcastle (401-500 band), and UniSA breaking into the top 500.
Muted allegory is the new norm
In previous years, there has been great excitement when the ARWU is released. This year, we have observed that media coverage is not present, because there is nothing to brag about, and university comms are quietly celebrating that our universities are maintaining relative performance.
A key reason there is not much excitement about these results is because most universities are only meaningfully assessed on two to three measures, and the ranking uses the same methodology as when it first started in 2003. The only amendment made was in 2016, when ARWU adopted a yearly update to the Highly Cited Researcher list compiled by Clarivate.
There is also the rankings fatigue factor at play here. There are so many global rankings issued throughout the year that we keep losing perspective on what we are measuring, reporting, and what purposes they all fit. There is no indication that there will be methodological changes made to this ranking, so we are likely to see diminished public interest.
Parting thoughts
ARWU has served its purpose, which was to measure the relative progress of Chinese universities towards world-class status. In this context, universities are seen through the role they play internationally, and it has entrenched the marketisation of higher education.
Out of the universities included in the top 500, 91 are from China – compared to nine in 2003. By comparison, the number of universities from the United States has declined form 161 in 2003 to 114 in 2023, and there are also fewer universities from the United Kingdom; 42 in 2003 compared to 35 in 2024.
In my commentary last week, I said that the boom years for Australia are over, and I offered some views in strategies to mitigate the relative decline in standing. One additional strategy that our leaders could adopt is to bolster mentoring efforts so that early career researchers can benefit from the experience of established researchers.
Angel Calderon is Director, Strategic Insights at RMIT University.
