ShanghaiRanking released its eighth consecutive edition of its humongous subject rankings on 11 November. The Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) contains rankings across 55 subject areas and covers 1903 institutions across 96 countries. This year, there are 62 fewer institutions, and eight fewer countries listed compared to last year.
There has not been much media coverage of GRAS results, which is not surprising. We observed the same back in August when the Academic Ranking of World Universities was released. In part, this is driven by global rankings fatigue, Australian media and universities leaders’ attention rest elsewhere. It is also a reflection that ShanghaiRanking is not media driven or seeking attention.
Let us focus first how Australian universities perform, then I discuss methodological changes introduced this year.
Global context
Australia is fifth globally in the number of subject instances listed with 866 compared to Germany’s 934 instances and the United Kingdom’s 1560. Overall, 40 Australian universities have a published ranking for at least one subject. The United States has the highest number of listings (4277 instances) across 300 institutions, followed by China (3278 instances) across 335 universities.
On the ratio of subject listings per institution, Australia (21.7) outperforms the above countries and is the fourth top performer (i.e., countries with 100 or more listings), behind Netherlands (22.0) and Singapore (23.0). Denmark has the highest listings per institution (24.3).
Australia has a lower proportion of subjects ranked in the top 50 (18.0%) compared to the United States (21.7%) and China (20.4%). But Australia is ahead of the United Kingdom (16.6%), Canada (11.3%) and Germany (4.5%).
Interestingly, Australia is just a whisker ahead of China (34.6% vs 34.5%) in the proportion of subjects ranked in the top 100 (i.e. 1 to 100). Australia is also ahead of the United Kingdom (32.8%).
Top 50
The number of subjects ranked in the world’s top 50 increased to 156 from 137 in 2023. Of these, 34.6% are in Engineering (down from 41% last year) and 30.1% are in the Social Sciences (up from 21% last year). 26 Australian universities have one or more subject listing, with Melbourne, Queensland, UNSW, Sydney, and Monash having the most (between 15 and 21), followed by UWA, RMIT, Deakin, UTS, and ANU (between 6 and 8 listings each).
Top 100
Over the past six years, the proportion of subjects ranked in the world’s top 100 have ranged from a low of 34.1% to a high of 37.0%. In 2024, there are 300 subjects (or 34.6%) in the world’s top 100; of these 39.0% are in Engineering and 26.7% in the Social Sciences.
What we are observing is that the relative proportion of subjects ranked in the top 200 continue to increase. Again, this is an indication that Australia’s knowledge production output is not keeping pace with the globe trend setters in middle income countries. Fortunately, Australia’s research output has continued to be widely cited.
Stand outs
This year, Melbourne and Queensland have the highest proportion of their subject listings in the top 50 (42.9% and 40.8% respectively).
UNSW continues to have the highest proportion of its listing in the world’s top 100 at 74.0%, followed by Sydney at 68.1%.
Outside the highly intensive research universities, RMIT has the highest proportion of its listings in the top 50 (18.8%), followed by Deakin and UTS (both at 15.8%) as well as Curtin (15.6%).
Engineering is trending down
As I have previously noted, a key strength for ShanghaiRanking is that it provides comprehensive coverage for the field of Engineering with 23 subject listings.
For Australian universities, Engineering is the field with the most entries (310), of which 37.7% are in the top 100 compared to 41.6% in 2023. Social Sciences follows with 226 listings, of which 34.6% are in the top 100.
By comparison, 61.0% of entries for China are in Engineering, followed by 13.7% in the Natural Sciences and 10.7% in the Social Sciences. In turn, 33.6% of the United States entries are in the Social Sciences, followed by 26.7% in Social Sciences.
Lessons learned
Another year of global rankings is coming to an end. It has been a long season; in fact, the ranking season goes longer than the footy season.
Australian universities’ performance in subject rankings has continued to remain competitive, even though there are signs of deteriorating performance across the board. In April, when I commented on the QS Rankings by Subject, I noted that we are seeing a three-tiered system of Australia’s public universities. This tiered system is reflected across the board in global rankings, including at the subject level and specialized rankings.
The scope for continued improvement is limited for the top tier of institutions (i.e., those with the most financial resources). For the top tier to further improve, they will need to produce groundbreaking research.
This year we also experienced further weakening in performance in the reputation surveys. As noted recently, the lack of public investment in research and development, as well as the cap on international student enrolments, are likely to hinder Australian universities’ ability to remain competitive in global rankings.
| Table 1: Total number of times and band distribution for top countries listed in ShanghaiRanking’s 2024 Global Rankings of Academic Subjects by faculty | ||||||
| No. of times listed | Top 100 | Top 200 | Top 300 | Top 400 | Top 500 | |
| United States | 4277 | 37.8% | 26.0% | 16.8% | 11.9% | 7.5% |
| China | 3278 | 34.5% | 22.4% | 18.2% | 14.5% | 10.5% |
| United Kingdom | 1560 | 32.8% | 30.5% | 17.2% | 11.5% | 7.9% |
| Germany | 934 | 16.9% | 30.8% | 23.2% | 16.4% | 12.6% |
| Australia | 866 | 34.6% | 30.3% | 19.1% | 9.4% | 6.7% |
| Canada | 764 | 26.8% | 30.6% | 20.7% | 12.4% | 9.4% |
| Total | 18950 | 28.2% | 25.9% | 20.1% | 14.8% | 11.1% |
| Table 2: Total number of times and band distribution Australian universities listed in ShanghaiRankings’ 2024 Global Rankings of Academic Subjects by faculty | ||||||
| Top 100 | Top 200 | Top 300 | Top 400 | Top 500 | ||
| Engineering | 310 | 37.7% | 32.3% | 18.4% | 7.1% | 4.5% |
| Life Sciences | 78 | 29.5% | 17.9% | 24.4% | 12.8% | 15.4% |
| Medical Sciences | 118 | 33.1% | 24.6% | 20.3% | 11.0% | 11.0% |
| Natural Sciences | 134 | 30.6% | 29.9% | 20.1% | 10.4% | 9.0% |
| Social Sciences | 226 | 35.4% | 35.0% | 16.8% | 9.7% | 3.1% |
| Total 2024 | 866 | 34.6% | 30.3% | 19.1% | 9.4% | 6.7% |
| Total 2023 | 894 | 35.3% | 27.6% | 18.8% | 11.1% | 7.2% |
| Total 2022 | 884 | 37.0% | 26.1% | 19.6% | 10.4% | 6.9% |
| Total 2021 | 876 | 35.5% | 29.3% | 20.0% | 9.8% | 5.4% |
| Total 2020 | 34.1% | 29.1% | 19.6% | 11.1% | 6.1% | |
| Total 2019 | 34.9% | 29.7% | 19.8% | 9.2% | 6.4% | |
| Tables compiled by AJ Calderon using 2024 data available online and previous years data extracted at the time of release. | ||||||
Methodological changes
This year, ShanghaiRanking has added a new category which includes four indicators. The subject rankings have gone from five to nine indicators. ShanghaiRanking last made methodological changes in the 2017 edition.
It has introduced the World-Class Faculty category, which contains four new indicators:
- International Academic Award Laureates: The number of faculty members from an institution who have received significant international academic awards within an Academic Subject.
- Highly Cited Researchers (HCR): These are faculty members at an institution who are in the top 1% of most cited researchers as published in Clarivate’s annual HCR List.
- Chief Editors of International Academic Journals (Editor): It refers to the number of faculty members employed by an institution who currently serve as chief editors of international journals indexed by Clarivate.
- International Academic Organization Leadership. This measure of leadership refers to the number of faculty from an institution who currently hold leadership and senior executive positions in key international academic organizations.
Under the category of World-Class Output, there are two indicators:
- Top Journal Papers: It refers to the number of papers published in Top Journals or Top Conferences within an Academic Subject by an institution.
- International Academic Awards (Award) refers to the number of staff of an institution receiving a significant award in an Academic Subject since 1991.
The two World-Class Output indicators are a carry-over of the methodology in use between 2017 and 2023, together with:
- The number of Q1 publications based on the Journal Impact Factor. Q1 is now under the single indicator category of High Quality Research.
- The Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI). CNCI is the ratio of the citations received by an institution published papers to the average citations of papers in the same category, year, and type of journal publication. CNCI is now under the single indicator category of Research Impact.
- The measure of international collaboration. This measure is used to evaluate the level of international collaboration between institutions.
These methodological changes come to reinforce the role researchers play in the various spheres of knowledge production, translation and diffusion.
I welcome the introduction of the editor and leadership measures, even though these changes reinforce the hegemonic nature of academic life. These were missing ingredients as the individuals who are in these roles play an important role in the research ecosystem.
Mindful of yearly comparisons
Because of the new measures and adjustments to weightings across indicators, we need to be mindful in drawing inferences about this year’s performance compared to last year’s results. Some indicators have lower weights compared to previous year.
It may help to look at the trend data over the past five years and examine the data as it appears in Clarivate’s databases. It takes some digging around to determine whether the up or down movement for an institution is based on the revised methodology and adjusted weights or material variance in performance.
Clearly, there are instances in which the performance of Australian universities is trending down, driven by the absence of increased funding for research endeavours.
To wrap up this year’s global ranking season, the third edition of QS Sustainability Rankings is coming out in December. There are likely to be some interesting results in store. Before then, Times Higher Education will release its first Interdisciplinary Science Rankings on 21 November.
Angel Calderon is Director, Strategic Insights at RMIT University.
