The large declines in international student earnings during the pandemic have not culminated in a decline in performance in the rankings, as widely predicted, with lower earnings affecting both the quality and quantity of research.
University of Melbourne vice-chancellor (research) Jim McCluskey said the institution’s global standing “is something the whole university community is proud of”.
“The ARWU ranking particularly reflects the world-leading research being carried out at the university and our partners, forming a strong foundation for our teaching and education programs as well as translational outcomes that benefit society,” said Professor McCluskey.
The ARWU is among the most respected of the growing variety of university ranking tables, created in 2003 at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China to provide an objective understanding of what elements contribute to a world-class university.
The ranking has been criticized for its focus on the quality of research, but not teaching, which is a much more subjective area to measure.
The University of Sydney continued its winning streak after improving its ranking for the third consecutive year.
Emma Johnson, Sydney’s assistant vice-chancellor, noted the university’s contribution to shaping the national response to the pandemic, including the work of Professor Eddie Holmes which, with colleagues in China, was the first to publicly share the entire genome of SARS-CoV. -2, the virus that causes COVID-19 in humans.
The ARWU again named Harvard as the best university in the world, followed by Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge and the University of California, Berkeley. The University of Oxford ranks seventh, while 15 of the world’s top 20 universities are located in the US.
ARWU uses six indicators to rank 1000 of the world’s universities, including the number of alumni and staff who have won Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, as well as the number of highly cited researchers and the number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science.