UNSW rises in QS world university rankings

UNSW Sydney has been placed 43rd in the world in the prestigious QS World University Rankings.

The rise to 43 is one place higher than last year’s ranking and places UNSW among the top four per cent of universities in the rankings. UNSW has moved up nine places since 2014.

The 2022 edition of the rankings analysed the performance of the world’s top 1300 universities. Reputation is a central piece of the ranking criteria, accounting for half of the total score.

Based on the views of more than 205,000 employers and academics world-wide, UNSW ranked 32 globally in employer reputation and 41 globally in academic reputation.

The University also scored highly for its proportion of international students and faculty, jumping 11 spots in international students (30 globally), and receiving a high score for the proportion of international faculty members (44 globally).

UNSW President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ian Jacobs, said the ranking reflects the continuing progress made across the range of UNSW’s activity.

“My thanks to everyone in the UNSW community for their outstanding contribution which is reflected in our rise in the rankings. Our academics, students and staff have been rightly recognised here and overseas by their peers and employers,” Prof. Jacobs said.

“This is an external endorsement of the quality of our work, and the excellence our staff are achieving in pursuit of our vision to improve lives globally, through innovative research, transformative education and commitment to a just society.”

UNSW Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research & Enterprise) Professor Nicholas Fisk noted the rise in citations reflects not only the quality of UNSW research across all disciplines, but most importantly the impact on our community.

“I am chuffed to see the increased frequency of our research being referenced. UNSW’s largest increase in the main indicators this year was in citations. Based on nearly 800,000 citations, our normalised citations per faculty is more than four times the global median,” Prof. Fisk said.

For the tenth year in a row, US university, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was once again named best in the world followed by The University of Oxford.

Based on the number of top-200 universities, Australia is the third strongest global higher education location.

The full rankings are available here.