Truth of Australia’s universities hidden by global rankings

Annual accolades about Australia’s “best” universities, Times Higher Education (THE) this week’s ranking is one of three global ranking systems, but has long been considered by many to be the original and best.

The media bought it wholesale AFR breathlessly He noted that the University of Melbourne “retains its place” as the “best” in the country. This is followed by the usual Group of Eight (Go8) suspects, including Sydney, Monash, ANU, UNSW and the University of Queensland. global top 100.

So what do these rankings actually tell us? These focus strictly on research expenditure and output (rather than the quality or impact of the research) and are used by universities as an important tool to attract more international students.

This, critics say, is a self-reinforcing cycle and one of the fundamental distortions in Australian higher education. It promotes research over teaching, often to the detriment of students and staff. What we don’t know is whether the hefty pay packages of Australia’s vice-chancellors are tied to ranking performance because transparency and oversight in the sector is weak. But in many organizations, higher ranks and higher executive salaries tend to move in parallel.

What is striking is that THE rankings give little space to the views of key stakeholders (students and staff). In fact, the University of Melbourne was among the lowest ranked nationally. Student Experience Survey (SES).

University staff say the survey is being closely monitored. Most of the universities in THE top 10 in recent years received below average scores in this survey. This means that many “top ranked” universities rank low in terms of student satisfaction. Melbourne, Sydney, Monash, UNSW and others appear higher in the rankings but lower in student satisfaction results. As a former chancellor said cricketreputational damage from the survey (and other problems at top ranked universities, like UTS‘ mass redundancies and Western Sydney University cyber scandal) “doesn’t play any role in the rankings either – and it should”.

The vicious circle of foreign students

Australia’s universities have grown dramatically. University of Melbourne there is now There are more than 53,000 students on its campuses, 45% of whom are international students. The University of Sydney likewise enrolls tens of thousands of students and reported that 51% of its onshore students in 2024 were international; This marks the first time that domestic students outnumbered students. This number currently stands at 47.5 percent.

In contrast, elite global institutions operate on much smaller scales. Oxford University supports a student at the top of the rankings Hull for 26,000 peopleand other institutions in the global top 10 are similar to or smaller than Oxford; This means they don’t need to chase foreign student income so much to support the structures created in Australia.

The international student body is at the heart of the financial model of Australian universities. These students pay full price and are marketed aggressively; By attracting more enrollments from abroad, universities can increase their revenues and, in turn, increase their capacity to fund research and raise the metrics that feed into the rankings. It’s a vicious circle.

But scale and revenue bring risks. Critics say dependence on ranking logic often comes at the expense of teaching quality, student support, staff working conditions and compliance systems. This has led to a major and growing scandal over industrial-scale wage theft at universities in Australia.

Wage theft negatively affects an industry where accountability is low

Perhaps it is no surprise that the University of Melbourne is the most prominent case of university wage theft in Australia. In December 2024, Melbourne agreed: Repay $72 million More than 25,000 current and former staff were paid after an investigation by the Fair Work Ombudsman found that for more than a decade pay systems had been based on flawed “benchmarks”, with staff paid on words per hour or “time per pupil” measurements rather than actual hours worked. The conduct was ruled “unlawful”.

Melbourne’s deal included powers to overhaul payroll, staffing, timekeeping and compliance systems, and admitted underpaying 14 casual arts academics between 2017 and 2020 as part of its benchmarking regime. The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) called it “the most broadly applicable initiative undertaken by any university” and called for the model to be adopted sector-wide.

Elsewhere was the University of Sydney. obliged to repay $23 million to around 15,000 staff under the Fair Work order. Monash in July found guilty There are more “major” wage theft cases to be quantified, following an earlier $7.6 million underpayment, bringing the total since 2016 to nearly $18 million. UNSW provided $70.8 million for past payment obligations in the 2023 Annual Report.

These statements have increased throughout the sector. NTEU estimates total fees stolen at Australian universities will exceed $400 million. There seems to be no end to these cases; Just last month the University of Wollongong refund order issued $6 million underpayment. According to NTEU national president Alison Barnes, “the wage theft epidemic has been the canary in the coal mine for the wider governance disaster we are witnessing in our universities.”

In parallel, temporary work has become entrenched in Australian universities, with approximately 40% of academic staff employed on fixed-term contracts and 20-25% on temporary contracts, according to federal data. latest research From the Melbourne Center for Higher Education Studies. Rates are even higher at larger institutions; The University of Melbourne has previously acknowledged this. more than 70% A large portion of the workforce works on precarious contracts.

Meanwhile, Australia’s university vice-chancellors get paid buffer salaries He is unlikely to face any penalties or clawbacks for lowering his wage bill — averaging more than $1 million a year — and for wage theft or other scandals.

This convergence in scale, revenue dependence on overseas students and poor integration infrastructure help explain how top universities win in global rankings but also fail in classroom experience and staff equity. The race for ranking prestige leads institutions to prioritize what is measured in terms of research outputs, at the expense of what matters in the field.

The challenge for Australia’s top universities (Melbourne, Sydney, Monash, UNSW and their peers) is to align perceived prestige with academic integrity. This should mean tying manager incentives not just to the ranking of positions but to measures such as learning outcomes, satisfaction scores, fair pay, staff retention and audit transparency. This should also mean rethinking ranking metrics to give real weight to student experiences and teaching innovation, not just citations and grant revenue.