Ranking of Australian and New Zealand Universities - Essay Example

RАNKING ОF АUSTRАLIАN АND NЕW ZЕАLАND UNIVЕRSITIЕS Name: Course: Professor’s Name University Name City, State Date due Introduction There is a wide array of systems that are used to rank the Australian and New Zealand universities. The systems range from QS Top Universities, ARWU, and US News, Times, the local research ERA and the 5 Star rankings. In Australia, some of the best universities that have been identified by these ranking systems are the University of Sydney, the university of Melbourne and Queensland University. There are however, more ranking special ranking systems that are used for the ranking of universities among them being the times reputation, subject ranking, under 50 years old and the global science index. When it comes to the world rankings, the Australian universities have proven to be pot track performers. The study will focus on the world university rankings provided by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings and the QS World University Rankings [Ter13]. The times higher education rankings released for the 2014-2015 university ranking provides for rankings with references to the subjects and courses that they offer, the world reputation of the universities, the top a hundred universities in the world that are under fifty years old and BRICS and emerging economies ranking. Unlike the ARU performance, the times higher education rankings provides its ranking decisions based on thirteen well defined and established indicators that can be trusted and used by the students, university leaders, academicians and the industry as a whole [Luc06]. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings uses indicators such as research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook of the universities and the teaching organization of each of the university. The thirteen performance indicators for each university are usually grouped into five major categories namely; the teaching and learning environment, the citations research influence and the research sectors which encompasses the income, volume and reputation of the universities. Each of these indicators takes up thirty per cent of the overall ranking score. Other indicators used include the international outlook and the industry income driven by innovation in each university which are worth 7.5% and 2.5% respectively. The academic ranking of world universities was started in 2003 to rank world universities based on predetermined methodologies. The academic ranking of world universities provides for an analysis of top universities in the different countries in the world and releases statistics that identify the top universities by region and by country. It provides for the number of universities in each level for the different universities in the different countries. The statistics provided by the organization lists the number of universities against each given region that are ranked top 100, 200, 400 and 500. The organization also gives a rank of the same universities according to their countries. The indicators that are used by the academic ranking of world universities to determine the ranks of universities include the quality of education provided by the institutions, the quality assurance that is provided for by the faculties of each university, per capita performance and the research output by each university. The total of all the indicators determines the total that each university scores and the final score determines their rank in the regional and country ranking. QS World University Rankings uses six performance indicators to determine the rank of each university. The QS World University Rankings first published their university rankings in 2004 where they highlighted the in their opinion the ranks of each university in the world for more than 800 different universities. The QS World University Rankings uses six performance indicators to determine which university is ranked first and which is ranked last. The ranking provides individual rankings for the first 400 universities then groups the other universities in groups of 100 universities. Just like the other university ranking organizations, the QS World University Rankings uses the six indicators to assess four areas which are teaching, research, employability and the international outlook. The six indications that QS World University Rankings uses are academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per facility and faculty to students’ ratio. There indicators are based on hard data that is collected from each of the universities. Other indicators include the international students’ ratio and the international staff ratio which are determined by major global surveys. Each of the ranking systems has features eight Australian universities in the top a hundred global universities. When it comes to the world rankings in specific areas of study, the Australian universities have at least three in universities that appear in the top 50 world rankings. Some of the study areas that the Australian universities have been strong at include Engineering and Technologies, Arts and Humanities, Life Sciences, Natural Sciences and Medicine and Social Sciences and Management. Of all the ranking systems that are used to rank the universities, the University Reviews Australia is considered the most relevant and reliable ranking system used to rank the universities. The system uses data from three performance indicators that are determinants of the quality of education provided by the universities. The ARU performance indicators usually rank the universities with a score out of five on each of the three performance indicators. The indicators used are reputation, ratings and results. The reputation is a measure of how well the universities perform in the world rankings. Ratings are usually a measure of the satisfaction of the graduates that they report in the Australian graduate survey. Finally, the results measure the salaries that the graduates earn, the type of employments that they secure and their willingness and ability to further their studies. When all the ratings are completed, the university with the highest average ratings is considered the top university in the country and in the world. List of Australian universities and their strength areas The ranking of the universities in the world by the different ranking organizations provide the universities with an opportunity to determine their key strength areas and focus more resources into such areas to ensure that they continue being their strengths and they perform better in the areas over time. The list provides an overview of the strong universities in Australia as ranked by ARU according to excellence and research and according to their strengths in the different fields that they teach their students. The list provides the key strengths of the different universities according to the subjects that are taught in their institutions. Ranking according to excellence and research University 2012 Rank 2010 Rank Proportion of Excellence Melbourne 1 2 85.45% Sydney 2 5 84.54% ANU 3 1 80% UQ 3 3 80% UNSW 4 4 75.24% Monash 5 6 68% UWA 6 7 47.62% Adelaide 7 8 46.36% Macquarie 8 10 35% Wollongong 9 11 32.22% SCU 10 25 31.11% Tasmania 11 13 26.67% QUT 12 9 26.32% UTS 13 20 25.56% Newcastle 13 16 25.56% UniSA 14 19 22.67% Swinburne 15 18 21.67% Griffith 16 12 20% RMIT 16 21 20% Deakin 17 17 18.95% JCU 18 14 17.89% UWS 19 23 16% La Trobe 20 15 15.56% CQU 21 28 15.38% CDU 22 24 14.55% Murdoch 23 18 14.44% Bond 24 28 8.89% USC 24 28 8.89% CSU 25 28 5.33% Curtin 26 22 5% UNE 27 27 4.71% Flinders 28 28 3.81% USQ 29 25 0% Victoria 29 28 0% Canberra 29 26 0% ECU 29 28 0% FEDUNI 29 28 0% ACU 29 28 0% Notre Dame 29 28 0% University ranking by subject Aus Rank University Score World Rank Subject Area: Arts and Humanities 1 Australian National University 75.2 16 2 University of Sydney 72.1 18 3 University of Melbourne 71.9 19 4 Monash University 55.6 44 5 University of Queensland 45.1 67 6 Macquarie University 45.1 67 7 La Trobe University 36.4 99 8 University of New South Wales 36.3 100 Subject Area: Clinical Pre-Clinical and Health 1 University of Melbourne 81.5 13 2 University of Sydney 75.4 23 3 University of Queensland 65.8 42 4 Monash University 64.3 46 5 University of New South Wales 62.2 54 6 University of Adelaide 51.3 95 7 University of Western Australia 51.2 96 Subject Area: Engineering and Technology 1 University of Melbourne 62.8 37 2 University of Queensland 62.7 39 3 University of Sydney 60.4 46 4 Monash University 60.2 48 5 University of New South Wales 54.2 63 6 University of South Australia 51.5 69 Subject Area: Life Sciences 1 University of Melbourne 70.1 29 2 University of Queensland 69.4 31 3 Australian National University 68.6 33 4 Monash University 56.8 63 5 University of Western Australia 56.2 64 6 University of Sydney 55.8 65 7 University of Adelaide 50 96 Subject Area: Physical Sciences 1 Australian National University 69.7 28 2 University of Melbourne 69.2 30 3 University of Queensland 52.7 87 Subject Area: Social Sciences 1 University of Melbourne 76 19 2 Australian National University 70.4 24 3 University of Sydney 65.1 31 4 University of Queensland 62.4 35 5 University of New South Wales 58.4 46 6 Monash University 53.5 61 7 University of Western Australia 49.7 77 Quality Assurance for domestic and international students in Australia and New Zealand Australia A good business name usually goes a long way in retaining and attracting more customers. A good business name is, however, difficult to achieve as it requires that the institution provides quality in the products and services that they offer to the public [Bes09]. Australia has developed internal and external quality assurance standards and guidelines that seek to ensure that the students from both the local and international markets are guaranteed of quality education. The major quality assurance standards that have been developed and recognized by higher institutions in Australia include, policy and procedures that are used for quality assurance the assessment of students, Approval, monitoring and periodic review of programmes and awards and quality assurance required for the teaching staff. The major external quality assurance standards that have been developed and recognized by higher institutions in Australia include processes fit for purpose, the development of external quality assurance processes and the use of internal quality assurance procedures. On the issue of policy and procedures that are used for quality assurance, the universities in Australia have been keen to develop policies and procedures that are associated with the provision of quality standards in the programs and awards that they offer to their students. The policies have been developed in such a way that the roles of each of the stakeholders in the institutions are well spelled out and understood [Koz02]. The assessment of students is done in a predetermined way such as the use of an already published criteria consisting of procedures and regulations that are applied consistently. Approval, monitoring and periodic review of programs and awards for the institutions of higher learning in Australia is also done formally. The programs and awards have had a mechanism developed which provides for the approval, monitoring and regular review of the programs and awards [Neh14]. Finally, the quality assurance required for the teaching staff also provides a means through which the staff teaching the students can be monitored and evaluated to ensure that they provide quality when teaching the students. Formal mechanisms in Australia have been developed to ensure that teachers teaching in the institutions of higher learning in the country are qualified and competent enough in their work [Ric04]. REFERENCES Ter13: , (Tero, 2013), Luc06: , (Lucille, 2006), Bes09: , (Bessant & Tidd, 2009), Koz02: , (Kozami, 2002), Neh14: , (Nehme, 2014), Ric04: , (Ricky & Bruce, 2004), Read More