The academic year is now in full swing, with university campuses once again animated by the return of students. We will soon re-enter the familiar performative cycle when global rankings become part of the institutional spin, enabling universities to showcase achievements and signal continued progress towards excellence.
The release of universities’ annual reports will soon follow, once again drawing close attention to how public funds are used and to the sector’s reliance on international students to support research endeavors and campus operations. Invariably, this will prompt discussion about the extent to which universities are effectively governed, connected to, and responsive to the needs of their local communities.
In this commentary, I discuss recent developments across the major ranking schemas and consider the outlook for Australian universities.
Timed out
It is worth noting that TIME Magazine has entered the global university rankings scene some 25 years after the establishment of major international ranking schemas. In late January and in partnership with Statista R, TIME released the inaugural edition of the World’s Top Universities of 2026, featuring 500 universities and including 25 from Australia.
TIME limited its release to the ranks and score for the pillars underpinning the ranking and the overall score. The methodology is intended to capture universities’ emphasis on real world innovation, labour market outcomes, and internationalisation. However, the ranking offers limited new insight to support institutional strategy or to assist prospective students in making informed choices about where to study.
For measures related to academic capacity and performance, readers may find greater value in the financial sustainability metrics published by the Round University Ranking which enable detailed analysis and benchmarking across specific indicators, institutions, and time periods.
In relation to innovation and economic impact, the metrics underpinning the SCImago Institutions Rankings provide a more established and transparent point of reference.
On the internationalisation pillar, TIME does not introduce measures that materially extend beyond those already reflected in the QS and Times Higher Education (THE) global rankings.
QS Subject Rankings
The sixteenth edition of the QS World University Ranking by Subject are out on the evening of March 25. To produce the rankings for this year, QS analysed the reputation and research output of over 6,277 institutions globally. The published listings include 1,912 institutions (up from 1,747 last year) from 166 countries across 55 subject areas and five broad faculty areas.
Overall, 37 Australian institutions will have a published ranking for at least one subject. Last year, 67.1% of Australian universities listed subjects that are ranked in the world’s top 200, compared to 63.9% for universities from the United States and 69.1% for the United Kingdom.
There is such a richness of data in these subject rankings, which can also be linked to other datapoints from Australia’s higher education statistics, it is possible to derive meaningful insights about the depth of activity across universities.
SDG Impact Ratings
THE has renamed the Impact Rankings to a rating system, and it will be known as the Sustainability Impact Ratings. Results are due in June.
For this year’s edition, almost 1,650 universities across 116 different countries submitted data. Almost 60% of participating institutions are from Asia, 20% from Europe, 12% from Asia, with the remaining from other world regions.
The number of participating universities is down by about 660 from last year’s peak of 2,318, influenced by the introduction of a fee-for-service membership model.
THE has also began a process of consultation with institutions for potential changes to the structure and further refinements to methodology of the Impact Ratings from 2027.
Self-citation
Over the past two years, scrutiny has increased around unusually high rates of self-citation and how they may influence research practices across institutions. In the latest edition of the SCImago Institutions Rankings, 61 universities are flagged for elevated self-citation (over 25%) and self-referencing (over 15%). These behaviours can materially affect ranking positions; accordingly, SCImago considers these institutions to be at risk on integrity grounds. As a result, they may be removed from their Institution Rankings in future editions.
Although it is often argued that this issue is less prevalent among universities in liberal economies, institutions should still monitor their practices closely to avoid inadvertent misconduct.
What lies ahead?
Over the years, Australian universities have done remarkably well in global rankings. The momentum seems to be waning, driven by the continued changes to policy changes in relation to international students, universities’ weakening finances, modest annual rates of scholarly outputs and weakening reputation.
Whilst the sandstone universities have the greatest share of scholarly outputs, regional universities are having higher rates of growth compared to all other universities.
We are also seeing that the Dawkins-era universities are rapidly increasing their proportion of scholarly outputs in the top 10% of journals, and achieving higher citation impacts compared to others.
It is worth recalling that the volume and quality of research endeavours across leading universities in Eastern and Southeast Asia are continuing to increase at a faster pace than what is seen across universities from liberal economies.
While Australian universities may continue to perform strongly in global rankings in the short term, attention should shift to how the sector can adapt to a rapidly evolving geostrategic environment and take a more deliberate approach to building meaningful multilateral partnerships in an increasingly fragmented world. Australian universities’ reputation has been dented in recent years, and we must strengthen our efforts in building reputation capital to ensure the viability of our institutions.
Angel Calderon is a higher education global expert who is Director, Strategic Insights at RMIT University.