Opinion
Global rankings generate strong reactions every time they are released.
There is a camp that despises them entirely, arguing that rankings are unnecessary and add no meaningful value to university’s core missions. Another group has learned to live with them, viewing rankings as just one of point of reference – or even curiosity – when considering what universities are doing. And there is also a camp of those who are largely indifferent and do not pay them much attention at all.
I have always been perplexed when global rankings have been reported in the media, and subsequently augmented by university leaders, including by academics writing about them, without giving diligent consideration on whether there is anything worth reporting.
There is broad consensus that global rankings measure things that can be (easily) measured, have flawed methodological constructs, and are inherently complex, just like the way universities operate.
Arguably, there is no such thing as a perfect measurement. But there can be responsible and meaningful reporting on what is measured. There are times when silence or not reporting them is more impactful than augmenting what are inaccurate, invalid and meaningless findings because of flawed methodology and an absence of transparency in what is measured and what sources of information are used.
Australia remains a high-quality system
As far as I can see, Australian universities continue to deliver high-quality education. In fact, Australia as a system remains a top performer in the QS World University Rankings by Subject and the ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects.
For the public investment made in higher education, Australia continues to attract and retain talent. As a way of example, Australia remains fifth globally in the number of Highly Cited Researchers (HCRs) list produced by Clarivate, and Australia’s share of HCRs has remained stable over the past eight years.
Amid global geopolitical uncertainty and increasing challenges facing universities in liberal economies, there is growing interest among researchers from offshore in working in Australia. However, this demand is influenced by one key constraint: Australian universities are not in expansionary mode, largely due to ongoing financial pressures and reduced public investment in research endeavours.
The number of Higher Degree by Research completions continue to increase, increased by 8% from 10,359 in 2020 to 11,145 in 2024, of which 42% were from international students. Therefore, building the academic and research workforce continues unhindered.
Furthermore, Australia’s volume and quality of scholarly outputs continue to increase, according to data from Elsevier’s Scopus. Interestingly, Australian universities’ output increased by 4% between 2024 and 2025, after the downward trend following the pandemic.
More notably, Australian universities publications in Quartile 1 journals increased by 11% between 2024 and 2025, compared to 5% for the preceding year and negative growth following the pandemic.
Elsevier data also shows that although Australia’s volume of outputs is about half of the United Kingdom’s, Australia has had a higher citation impact over the past fifteen years.
Rankings galore
Global rankings continue to proliferate, and dissemination of more than 15 schemas remain unabated. Earlier in the year, Time Magazine entered the global university rankings, in partnership with Statista R, and released the inaugural edition of the World’s Top Universities of 2026, featuring 500 universities, including 25 from Australia.
However, the Time ranking offers limited new insight to support institutional strategy or to assist prospective students in making informed choices about where to study.
Recently, the 2026 edition of the Centre for World University Rankings (CWUR) was released which included 2000 universities, of which 37 are from Australia. CWUR uses four broad categories, noting that majority of universities are measured on a limited set of data (i.e., research endeavours). Most importantly, most universities are not measured on faculty awards and recognition, employability, and education impact as measured by alumni recognition.
CWUR does not disclose any substantive information on data sources, or underlying scores. Therefore, its overall usability is limited. Readers are advised to the data underpinning more transparent rankings, such as the CWTS Leiden Ranking. Alternatively, readers are encouraged to draw on data from open sources or from established databases such as Elsevier’s Scopus or Clarivate’s Web of Science.
Rankings abound and with it comes good and bad data. It is up to us to sift through the noise and look at the patterns that emerge from all of them.
Angel Calderon is Director of Strategic Insights at RMIT University