University rankings - why do they matter?
23 June 2017 | news
Love them or hate them, world university rankings are now the higher education version of Trip Advisor, pivotal to universities’ international standing. So why do they matter so much? And how does New Zealand stack up in this year’s QS rankings?
While international ranking systems need to be interpreted with caution, they receive a lot of attention and have become pivotal to universities’ international standing. So why do they matter so much?
International students looking for somewhere to study, international academics looking at jobs, and universities and research institutes looking for partners, are all guided by rankings. International students continue to place a high reliance on rankings for deciding where they will get the best education. This is particularly the case for students from Asia and Latin America. Importantly, many overseas universities will enter into research collaborations, student exchanges and articulation/pathway programmes only with universities that are ranked similarly or higher than they are. Some Asian and South-American governments will only offer scholarships for their students to study abroad in institutions ranked in the top 100 or 200 in the world.
Recognising the importance of rankings, other countries have been systematically investing in their universities in ways that have seen large numbers of universities rising rapidly in their rankings leapfrogging New Zealand universities and causing our universities to drop in the rankings despite the fact that our actual performance continues to improve.
So how did New Zealand’s universities perform in this year’s QS World University Rankings?
New Zealanders can be proud that all eight universities have again been ranked within the top 450 universities in the world in the annual World University Rankings. New Zealand is thought to be the only country in the world to have all its universities ranked in the top 3% in the world, which is a significant achievement for a country of this size and funding levels.
Despite stiff international competition, nearly all have retained or improved their rankings this year.
Compared with 2016 results, this year sees our largest university, the University of Auckland, remain within the top 100 universities and slip just one place to 82nd. Our oldest, the University of Otago has risen 18 places to 151st. The University of Canterbury has remained on 214th; Victoria University of Wellington has risen 9 places to 219th; the University of Waikato has moved up 32 places to 292nd; Massey University has moved up 24 places to 316th; Lincoln University has moved up 24 places to 319th; and Auckland University of Technology remained on 441-450th. These are the highest QS rankings ever achieved by both Waikato and Lincoln.
However, the Chief Executive of Universities New Zealand, Chris Whelan sounds a warning note.
“Our universities performed strongly for academic reputation, employer reputation, research, and for international faculty and international students. However, our high faculty staff to student ratio saw all universities, except Lincoln, score much less favourably for this category”.
Universities New Zealand directly attributes the low score to government underfunding of the costs of teaching and learning. This is backed up by the recent respected Universitas 21 report, which singled out the New Zealand government for criticism for reducing funding as a share of GDP.
Read more:
Universities high-performing but under-funded: Universitas 21 Report