Melbourne jumps to 62 in world academic rankings

The University of Melbourne has jumped to 62nd internationally in the most highly regarded academic rankings of the world’s top universities.

Melbourne’s placement in the prestigious Shanghai Jiao Tong University 2010 Academic Rankings of World Universities (ARWU), released on Friday, is a rise of 13 places from last year, and 30 places since the rankings began in 2003.

It makes the University the most rapidly rising institution in the top 100 in the past year and one of only three Australian universities in that group. Melbourne ranked second nationally after the Australian National University and fourth in the Asia-Pacific region.

The ARWU compares 1200 higher education institutions worldwide on a range of criteria including staff and alumni winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly-cited researchers and articles published in Science and Nature and science citation indices, as well as academic performance in relation to the universities’ size.

The University of Melbourne ranked in the top 100 in three of the five major fields surveyed: it was 41st in Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy, which was the top rank in Australia; 48th in Life and Agricultural Sciences, and equal with several other international universities in the 52-75 band for Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences, which was the equal best result nationally.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Glyn Davis says it was an excellent result for Melbourne and continued the trend of improvements in the rankings over the past eight years.

“Since these measures are entirely based on research, this is a wonderful vindication of our research leadership and performance in recent years,’’ he says.

Professor Davis says Melbourne alumnus Professor Elizabeth Blackburn’s winning of the Nobel Prize for Medicine last October contributed to the university’s performance but the results were strong in all areas.

He says the most recent example of Melbourne’s research leadership occurred last week, with the University welcoming the IBM Blue Gene Supercomputer, which will be used for various projects including giving hundreds of thousands of glaucoma sufferers access to more accurate information about their deteriorating sight.

Professor Davis says the independent, external endorsement of the University’s research performance and training and of its researchers was especially pleasing.

He says Melbourne’s ARWU performance had improved steadily, rising from 92 in 2003 to 82 in 2004 and 2005, 78 in 2006, 79 in 2007, 73 in 2008 and 75 in 2009.

Last year, the University was also 36th in the Times Higher Education world rankings and 51st in the world in the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan’s analysis of universities’ scientific papers.