AUSTRALIA: Home-grown rankings gain support

Support is growing across Australia's higher education sector for an independent national university ranking system that would be more comprehensive than the Shanghai Jiao Tong survey of world universities, writes Andrew Trounson for The Australian. A national ranking would complement new performance indicators being developed by the federal government.

Speaking to The Australian higher education, Monash University Vice-chancellor Ed Byrne advocated a national ranking system to enhance the sector's performance in line with national needs. Byrne said too much emphasis was placed on the internationally recognised Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings, which focused on research and hard sciences.

He recommended an Australian system that would also give due weight to teaching, learning and community engagement. "It would be interesting to have for Australia an agreed national ranking system that would look at research output, educational excellence and community engagement in a way that the government and the Australian people could have confidence in," he said.
Full report on The Australian site