Six Australian universities have made the most recent ranking of the top engineering and technology faculties in the world with the University of Melbourne the highest ranked of the Australian unis.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) topped the QS World University Rankings, just ahead of Stanford University, University of Cambridge, National University of Singapore and ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
University of Melbourne was ranked at number 18 on the list, up five places on last year’s ranking. It was also the leading Australian university in most engineering and technology subject areas, ranked 23 for mechanical, aeronautical and manufacturing engineering, 18 for chemical engineering, 33 for electrical and electronic engineering and 13 for computer science and information systems.
In civil and structural engineering, University of NSW was the highest ranked Australian university, coming in at 14th worldwide.
The other Australian universities in the top 50 were University of NSW (21), University of Sydney (30), Monash University (39), University of Queensland (40) and Australian National University (41).
Dean of the Melbourne School of Engineering Professor Iven Mareels welcomed the news.
“The latest QS rankings results are a positive reinforcement of our efforts to achieve globally-competitive teaching, learning and research in Engineering and IT at Melbourne. It is a strong testament to the high-calibre of our staff at the Melbourne School of Engineering,” he said.
“While entering the global top 20 is an encouraging validation, we will keep striving to build on these results in order to maintain our standing as a world-class institution for Engineering and IT.”
Universities were ranked on six criteria with academic reputation accounting for 40% of the total figure. This is measured using a global survey, in which academics are asked to identify the institutions where they believe the best work is currently taking place within their own field of expertise.
The other indicators were: student to faculty ratio (20%), citations per faculty (20%), employer reputation (10% and also measured by a global survey), international faculty ratio (5%) and international student ratio (5%).