1. How good are Australian universities
How good are Australian universities? Simon Marginson University College London, UK 10 October R. Douglas Wright Lecture MDHS, University of Melbourne

2. Universities, and Australia

3. ‘How good?’ How good are Australian universities? In relation to what—
- to other universities abroad?
- to the global common good?
- to their own potential?
- to what the country allows them to be?
How good are they for Australia?
How good is Australia itself?
How good have the universities made Australia?

5. History

6. The universities today

7. 1.4 million students
40 public universities (91% of students)
363,000 international students (26% of all students)
442,000 students in STEM and health
359,000 students in management and commerce
57,000 in PhDs
$26.6 billion higher education income
42% from governments
20% from students through tuition loans
24% other student fees, of this 20% ($5.3 billion) from international students
total higher education exports ( ), including spending in general community = $13.7 billion

8. International comparisons

9. Proportion of research papers that had international co-authors, 2008-14
Netherlands 58%
UK 56%
Australia 52%
Canada 51%
USA 35%
China 24%
In the , 50% of all University of Melbourne papers had international co-authors, 49% in biomedical and health sciences

10. Australia in the Shanghai ARWU top 500
Universities in the ranking in 2017
top 50
Melbourne (39)
51-100
Queensland (55), Monash (78), Sydney (83), Western Australia (91), ANU (97)
Adelaide, New South Wales
Curtin, Macquarie
Deakin, QUT, Tasmania, Wollongong
Griffith, James Cook, La Trobe, Swinburne, Newcastle, U Technology Sydney, Western Sydney
Flinders, RMIT

11. Number of papers published 2012-2015 in top 10% of their field by citation rate
Harvard U 7134
Stanford U 3372
U Toronto 2980
University College London 2357
U Wisconsin-Maddison 1766
U British Columbia 1730
National U Singapore 1597
U Melbourne 1518
U California Davis 1493

12. The inner university

13. The outer university

14. The region and the world

15. Number of science papers : USA, China, other East Asia Web of Science/UNESCO data. Papers include reviews and notes. Other East Asia = Japan, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam

16. Mathematics and Computing Physical Sciences and Engineering
High citation papers, in top 10% of research field, in maths and physical sciences, (Leiden data)
World rank
University and system
Mathematics and Computing
Physical Sciences and Engineering 1
Tsinghua U CHINA
367
UC Berkeley USA
1176 2
Nanyang TU SINGAPORE
259
MIT USA
1175 3
Zhejiang U CHINA
256
1054 4
Huazhong UST CHINA
250
Stanford U USA
976 5
245
931 6
Harbin IT CHINA
236
Harvard U USA
875 7
National U SINGAPORE
226
857 8
208
U Cambridge UK
801 9
Xidian U CHINA
205
749 10
Shanghai JT U CHINA
196
U Science & Tech. CHINA
720 11
City U Hong Kong HK
188
ETH Zurich SWITZERLAND
678 12
U Texas Austin USA
187
U Tokyo JAPAN
649 13
South East U CHINA
184
638 14
Peking U CHINA
636 15
Beihang U CHINA
177
Caltech USA
635

17. Combining all high citation papers in maths, computing, physical sciences, engineering, (Leiden data)
World rank
University and system
High citation papers in Mathematics, Computing, Physical Sciences and Engineering 1
Tsinghua U CHINA
1421 2
MIT USA
1420 3
UC Berkeley USA
1360 4
Nanyang TU SINGAPORE
1190 5
Stanford U USA
1184 6
Zhejiang U CHINA
1113 7
Harvard U USA
1008 8
National U SINGAPORE
975 9
U Cambridge UK
936 10
ETH Zurich SWITZERLAND
842 11
U Science and Technology CHINA
835 12
Shanghai Jiao Tong U CHINA
834

18. Concluding thoughts