The Australian | 26 February 2014
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Six universities have so dominated the latest international ranking of performance across 30 subject areas they have taken out 141 of the available 150 top five places nationally.
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The Australian
Melbourne was once again named Australia’s best performing university in the QS World University Ranking by Subject being placed first nationally in 12 of the 30 disciplines.
Its best performance was in education, where it was named the second best faculty in the world, behind the University of London’s Institute of Education, up from third last year. Melbourne also took the crown as Australia’s most comprehensive university, named in the top five in 29 of the 30 disciplines.
Melbourne was particularly strong in science, maths and technology subjects, ranking first nationally in eight of the 16 subject areas. Conversely, the Australian National University, dominated in the arts and humanities, ranking first nationally and in the top 20 globally in five of the six subject areas. But the dominance of Melbourne and ANU, along with Sydney, Monash, the University of Queensland and the University of NSW, left little room for other institutions that excel in their fields.
While pleased with the result, particularly Melbourne’s ranking in education, vice-chancellor Glyn Davis pointed to doubts as to the rigour of the methodology behind the QS ranking, which gives particular emphasis to reputation surveys which means which means the more internationalised an institution was the likelier its name would be recognised.
Macquarie University was the only university to achieve two top five positions in philosophy and earth and marine sciences. Six other universities were placed in the top five nationally in one subject each: Curtin and the University of Western Australia (earth and marine sciences); La Trobe (history); Deakin (education); Adelaide (agriculture and forestry); Wollongong (materials science) and QUT (communication and media studies).
See
Melbourne’s world-class education rank confirmed
World subject rankings ‘good for business’
