For a third consecutive year, Australian universities experienced a decline in the Academic Ranking of World Universites (ARWU) – one of the world’s highest-profile rankings indices.
This result is not unexpected, given the slow growth in publications following the pandemic, including the number of outputs in Nature and Science and fewer highly cited researchers. As I observed last year, results for Australian universities do not bode well for the future.
The absence of increased investment in research endeavors in Australia is hurting and will continue to erode the standing of Australian universities in global rankings. In turn, it will hinder the ability to attract quality international students and talent.
For a fifteenth consecutive year since 2011, Melbourne remains Australia’s highest ranked university at 38th, down one place from last year.
Queensland follows second at 65th, two places down from last year. UNSW is down three places to 80th. Griffith and QUT dropped out of the 201-300 band to the 301-400 band.
There are 29 Australian universities included in the 2025 edition; four fewer compared to the 2022 edition. Of the 29 ranked, 24 are featured in the world’s top 500, which is unchanged from last year. Back in 2003, there were 13 Australian universities ranked in the world’s top 500.
Over the past nine years, Australia’s leading research-intensive universities have experienced a decline, despite an uplift between 2020 and 2022.
In brief:
- Melbourne went from being ranked 39th in 2017 to a peak at 32nd in 2022
- Queensland went from being ranked 55th in 2017 to a peak at 47th in 2022
- Sydney went from being ranked 83rd in 2017 to a peak at 60th in 2022, ranking at 72nd in 2025
- UNSW went from being ranked in the 101-150 band in 2018 to 80th in 2025, and best result in 2022 at 64th
- Monash went from being 78th in 2017 to 76th in 2025, and best result in 2022 at 76th , although Monash performance has fluctuated during the nine years in reference.
- ANU and UWA both ranked among the top 100 for seven of the past nine years but ranked in the 101-150 band in the past two years. ANU ranked 97th in 2017, with a peak at 68th in 2020, while UWA ranked 91st in 2017 and had a peak at 86th in 2020
- Adelaide ranked in the 101-150 band for five out of the past nine years but has ranked in the 151-200 band for the past two years
Global top performers
Every year on August 15, the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has listed Harvard as the number one university in the world. Harvard has maintained this status for the past 23 years, followed by Stanford and MIT.
Once again, ShanghaiRanking Consultancy scrutinized more than 2,500 institutions and the best 1000 performing universities in the world were ranked.
Eight out of the top ten are universities from the United States. The United Kingdom’s Cambridge is ranked 4th and Oxford ranked 6th.
Paris-Saclay remains the best performer from continental Europe at 13th followed by ETH Zurich at 22nd.
City University of Hong Kong (City UHK) and Stockholm University broke into the top 100 this year. City UHK ranked in the 201-250 band in 2017 and progressively moved up to 99th in 2025. Stockholm ranked among the world’s top 100 between 2017 and 2023 but dropped out in 2024.
Tsinghua moved up four places to 18th and remains Asia’s best performer. Tsinghua ranked 48th in 2017 and progressively has continued to improve. Peking also continues to improve and is ranked 23rd compared to 72nd in 2017. Zhejiang follows at 24th compared to 27th last year or outside the top 100 in 2017.
This is the third year in which there are more universities from mainland China on the ARWU list, with 222 universities in the top 1000, compared to 183 universities from the United States.
Parting thoughts
The ability for Australian universities to further improve in the ARWU list is limited, partly due to its narrow set of measures, but also because we are not achieving sufficient annual growth rates in scholarly output to offset competition from leading universities in Asia and other emerging economies.
This reflects the level of financial investments in research endeavors and their capacity to produce scholarly outputs of high quality through collaboration.
We see that our universities ranked in the middle bands have higher rates of annual growth than those at the top. It’s significantly harder to knock off competition at the top given the limited scope there exists. Rankings are a zero-sum game.
Furthermore, the impact of policy changes introduced by governments from our top collaborators (e.g., United States, the United Kingdom, and all other liberal economies) will resonate with us years down the track.
To achieve better results in global rankings, increased levels of investment are required as well as increasing research capacity and providing incentives to strengthen the research and innovation ecosystem.
Angel Calderon is Director of Strategic Insights at RMIT University.