By Evie McEachern
Picture this: the year is 2020 and high school me is sitting at my desk, pondering where to go to university. So I did what any slightly misguided 17-year-old would do and searched up, “What is the best university in Australia?” The answer was clear: the ‘Australian National University’. I did not question this at all, and here I am several years later.
The first thing I probably should have considered is who exactly decides how ANU and other universities are ranked. Observer is here to explain it.
There are two main organisations responsible for ranking universities globally: the QS World University Rankings and the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings.
ANU recently moved up in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, with six subjects ranked in the top 20 globally, and 42 subjects ranked in the top 50 globally. ANU is now ranked 30th overall globally by QS, up from 34th in 2024, and is ranked 4th in Australia. However, this slight improvement has not returned ANU to the rankings it received in past years. In 2016, ANU peaked in its QS ranking at 19th globally.
In 2025, THE ranked ANU 73rd globally, a decrease from 67th in 2024, with the university remaining 4th in Australia. None of ANU’s subjects made it into their top 20, with social sciences landing the highest ranking of equal 29th. This continues a downward trend in ANU’s THE ranking, with the university’s peak occurring in 2017 at 47th globally. The trend in ANU’s QS and THE ranking is reflected in the below graph.
Another aspect of uni rankings that I failed to consider at 17 is the criteria used to decide how each university performs. Why exactly does ANU perform so differently between the QS and the THE?
Put simply, the QS prioritises student experience and employability, while the THE emphasises research and academic reputation. This is reflected in the rankings criteria: the THE has more criteria categories concerning research, including ‘Research Environment’ and ‘Research Quality’, of which ANU performs poorly in ‘Research Environment’. In comparison, the QS’s only criteria related to research is ‘International Research Network’ which ANU performs well in.
Based on this, undergraduate students may be more invested in the results of the QS rankings whereas postgraduate students and staff may be more interested in the results of the THE rankings.
However, there are some similarities between the two rankings’ chosen criteria and how ANU performs. Both organisations consider the quality of teaching: the QS specifically looks at ‘Faculty student ratio’ and the THE considers ‘Teaching’ more broadly, both of which ANU scores significantly lower in than any other category.
Keen-eyed students may notice that ANU tends to favour their more positive rankings. The ANU study home page refers to both the QS and THE rankings depending on which the university performed best in. In some cases, the page cites statistics from 2023 or 2024, despite the majority of 2025 ranking information being available since October of last year. Additionally, it references the Good Universities Guide 2023 for its five star rating of “student-to-staff ratio and staff qualifications” which contradicts the QS and the THE comparable category rankings.
My advice to my past self and to other students trying to decipher the rankings system is to focus on the subject you wish to study. Both the QS and the THE do university rankings by subject where you can filter to see which Australian university performs the best in your chosen discipline.
Coincidentally, ANU is currently ranked first in my specialisation, Sociology. A truly happy ending to our story.
Graphics by: Shé Chani
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