International students should ignore bogus university rankings

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The Academic Rankings of World Universities was released last week, which placed a record seven Australian universities within the world’s top 100:


The ranking, produced by the China-based Shanghai­Ranking Consultancy, is regarded by most top universities as the most ­prestigious of the international rankings because it measures only excellence in research — mainly in the sciences.

It rewards universities for their number of highly cited ­researchers, the volume of highly cited ­research papers they produced, the number of papers published in the prestigious journals Science and ­Nature, and the number of alumni and academic staff who have won Nobel prizes and Fields medals (the top honour in mathematics).

Professor Jacobs said ­Aus­tralia’s strong position in the ranking demonstrated the country had real global strength in ­research…

You will notice above that these rankings relate to university research, specifically the “number of highly cited ­researchers” and “the volume of highly cited ­research papers”. These rankings are then used as a marketing tool to entice international students to study in Australia.

That is, a higher university ranking equates to more prestige and is a sign of quality, which then encourages international students to choose that institution over another, as well as justifies charging higher tuition fees.

Not surprisingly, then, the above ranked universities have also experienced sharp increases in the share of commencing international students:

However, what should concern international students the most is not its research rankings, but rather the quality of teaching. And on this front, the picture is not as pretty.

As shown in the next chart, the ratio of students to academic staff has increased significantly across Australia’s universities, from 20.05 in 2009 to 21.44 in 2017, according to the Department of Education:

Given the sharp increase in international students, this is a worrying development. Most international students are from Non-English Speaking Backgrounds and, therefore, require more teaching assistance than domestic students. As such, the bigger student loads, alongside the higher maintenance of these students, suggests a material erosion in teaching capacity and quality across Australia’s universities.

The next chart shows that student to academic staff ratios has increased across five of the seven top ranked universities, with ANU (fallen) and Sydney University (unchanged) the notable exceptions:

This data suggests that international students seeking a quality education should definitely avoid the University of Queensland, given the sharp rise in the number of university students relative to teaching staff. They should also be sceptical of Monash University.

At the other end of the spectrum, ANU and Sydney University look like safer options given their preferable student to teaching staff ratios.

That said, all of Australia’s top ranked universities, other than the University of Queensland, had lower student-to-academic staff ratios than the national average. This implies that their quality is generally superior to Australia’s second tier universities.

About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.