Research drives NZ uni world ranking

WELLINGTON: New Zealand universities are climbing up the world rankings as their academics focus more on worldleading research.

Five of the country’s eight universities have risen in the latest QS rankings.

Waikato University is the standout success, leaping more than 100 places in three years to 292nd place — in the top 1.1% of the world’s 26,000 universities.

The only local university that dropped this year is the University of Auckland, but it has slipped only one place and at 82nd in the world it is still New Zealand’s leading university.

Rankings for the University of Otago (now 151st) and AUT University (441st to 450th) have been stable.

Victoria has jumped 46 places since 2013, to 219th place, closing the gap on the University of Canterbury which is up 24 places to 214th.

Lincoln University has also jumped, from between 481st and 490th in 2013 to 319th. Massey University rose 27 places to 316th.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology tops the world list for the sixth year in a row, followed by fellow United States universities Stanford, Harvard and Caltech.

The list, produced by London consultancy Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd, is mainly driven by a survey asking 75,000 academics to rank the top universities in their fields, and appears to favour Englishspeaking institutions.

The US, Britain and Australia have the most universities in the top 50 and in the top 100.

Universities NZ director Chris Whelan said the biggest driver was the PerformanceBased Research Fund, which allocates research funding to universities based on a formula in which the biggest factor is publications in international journals.

‘‘It’s meant we have actually had quite a singleminded focus on lifting the level and impact of our research,’’ he said. — NZME