ANU ranked Australia’s best — again

The Australian National University has again been recognised as Australia’s best university, ranked 16th in the world in a comparison of the world’s top 200 universities by the UK’s Times Higher Education Supplement.

The survey ranked universities around the world on the basis of evaluations by 1,300 academics from 88 countries. The survey also takes into account attractiveness to international students and academics.

Earlier this year, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Institute of Higher Education ranked ANU as Australia’s best university for the second consecutive year.

"We commonly recognise elite athletes, elite singers, even elite racehorses — and it is time our elite academics and students had a slice of the attention"

Professor Chubb

Probably the most rigorous analysis of the University’s performance, however, came from an extensive audit of the quality of outcomes, the 2004 ANU Quality Review. The Review Team concluded that ANU was certainly amongst the world’s best universities; possibly well within the top 50.

ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Chubb welcomed the Times survey.

“So this is another excellent result, not in that the number is ‘16’ but that it provides further recognition of the extraordinary depth of talent at ANU. All these rankings are imperfect — they all aggregate different variables. But one thing is consistent — confirmation that ANU is Australia’s leading university, and that it always ranks among the world’s very best,” Professor Chubb said.

“We are determined to deliver research which is as good as — or superior to — any other research in the world in our selected fields. ANU is still the only Australian university that has a Commonwealth-legislated responsibility to conduct research. We take that responsibility very seriously and our recent Quality Review was conducted to show not just our current position, but also how we could become even stronger.

“This is therefore a ranking of which all Australians can be proud; I hope they are.

“A university is nothing without its staff and students and we are excited to see their work acknowledged in this way. As Australians we commonly recognise elite athletes, elite singers, even elite racehorses — and it is time our elite academics and students had a slice of the attention.”

Also in ANU Reporter Summer 2004/05:

Rethinking Pompeii

Parched earth policy

Testing China's road mettle

From the Vice-Chancellor's desk

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