By Gurbir Singh:
Five New Zealand’s universities, including University of Waikato, have improved their world rankings, while all eight have remained within the world’s top 500 universities.
For the sixth year running, University of Waikato has climbed up in the global list of best universities announced today, and now sits at 266 out of 1,000 institutions worldwide. Since 2014, Waikato University has moved up 135 places in the rankings.
“We’ve climbed the QS World University Rankings for six years straight and will work toward another positive jump next year,” says Vice-Chancellor Professor Neil Quigley.
“This is a huge accomplishment for the University and something we can all be enormously proud to have achieved.”
Established in 1964, University of Waikato is New Zealand’s fifth largest university, with campuses located in Hamilton and Tauranga. It currently has 9,462 full-time equivalent enrolled students.
According to the year 2020 rankings of the world’s 1000 best universities by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), the Victoria University of Wellington improved its ranking to 215 and the University of Canterbury to 227. Auckland University of Technology rose 22 places to 442.
The biggest improvement in ranking was shown by Massey University and it jumped by 45 places to reach 287.
Remaining three New Zealand universities have, however, declined since last year’s QS report.
The country’s highest ranked institutions, University of Auckland and University of Otago could not maintain their last year’s strong position, and declined slightly. University of Auckland slipped by three places, and is now ranked at 88, and Otago University’s rank fell by one place to 176. Lincoln University, too, dropped 39 places to 356.
Marginal slide in world ranking by NZ universities was mainly attributed to a ‘drop in funding.’
Top on this global list of best universities is Boston’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed by Stanford University, Harvard University, the University of Oxford, and California Institute of Technology.
The year 2020 report of this London-based agency, QS used six “indicators” to compile its rankings and included a survey of more than 94,000 academics and 44,000 employers.
