University of Auckland climbs world rankings

The University of Auckland has continued to improve its world ranking, climbing to 137= in the latest Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, compared with 147= last year. This is the highest any university in Aotearoa New Zealand has ranked since THE first published rankings independently in 2010.*

Vice-Chancellor Professor Dawn Freshwater said she was heartened by the way the University continued to perform internationally, particularly considering the challenges created by the Covid pandemic over the past 18 months.

“Maintaining and improving our internationally recognised levels of education and research despite the uncertainties of the current environment, and at the same time positioning the University for a post-Covid reality, has been no mean feat.

“I commend University of Auckland staff for their dedication in achieving this outstanding result. It is the strength of our academic disciplines, including transdisciplinary collaborations, whole heartedly supported by our professional staff, that is reflected in this result.”

The THE World University Rankings measure performance within five broad pillars: teaching, research, international outlook, citations and industry income.

The University of Auckland saw the largest improvement in teaching, particularly in the ‘Doctorates awarded to Academic staff’ ratio which manifests its success in attracting, developing, and graduating doctoral students.

As universities around the world are increasingly measuring success by their alignment to social and environmental goals, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the University of Auckland is benefitting from an already solid reputation in work published around Health and Wellbeing. Other emerging strengths in areas such as sustainable ecosystems, and advancing just societies are enhancing the University’s research score.

“Importantly, we are starting to see the reputational benefit of our commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals showing in our overall reputation performance. This is gratifying given the priority we have put on this in our strategic plan Taumata Teitei,” Professor Freshwater said.
The International Outlook category was strengthened largely by the highly successful retention and support plan for international students. It also reflects the high level of international collaboration on publications.

More than 1,600 institutions were evaluated and ranked for the 2022 edition of THE’s world rankings. It is one of the most widely recognised ranking systems in the world, along with Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), which placed the University of Auckland 85th this year and the THE World Impact Rankings. The University retained a top ten position in the third year of the Impact Rankings, having been placed first for the first two years of this international performance table that assesses universities against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

*Prior to 2010 THE and QS published a collaborated table known as THE-QS World University Rankings. Under this system, in 2006 the University of Auckland was ranked at 46, in a considerably smaller pool of some 200 universities.

About the Times Higher Education World Rankings
The THE World University Rankings 2022 include more than 1,600 universities across 93 countries and regions, standing as the largest and most diverse university rankings to date. The table is based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

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