Otago University has improved in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by four places from 2015’s results, moving from 173rd to 169th place respectively.
The improvement does nothing to alter their nationwide ranking of second, with the University of Auckland being 88 places ahead on 81st place. It has achieved a top 100 place in each of the last five years, with 2016 being the highlight for the capital’s main university over that period.
Since 2012, Otago University’s ranking has decreased apart from this year’s decline; the institution was in 133rd place in 2012, 155th place in 2013, and 159th place in 2014.
University of Otago deputy vice-chancellor Prof Vernon Squire told the ODT that ''Otago's latest ranking of 169 is a small but pleasing improvement on 2015's score of 173.”
QS World University Rankings includes 916 different universities, and uses academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty to student ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty, and international students as categories for assessment.
According to the system, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the world’s leading university, and has been for the last five years. QS gave them a score of 100 in each category apart from a 99.9 in ‘citations per faculty’ and a 96.6 for their ‘international students’. Stanford, Harvard, Cambridge, and the California Institute of Technology round out the top five.
A press release from Steven Joyce, Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, reiterated that “New Zealand has a world class tertiary education system and it’s great to see our universities continuing to excel in a highly competitive international environment.”
The “Government has shown our commitment to universities by increasing funding for the sector by 24 percent since 2008. We also announced $761 million in new funding for the Innovative New Zealand package of science, tertiary and regional development initiatives in Budget 2016, a lot of which will flow into the university sector.”