World rankings

The latest global ranking results for the University are 89th (2024 QS World University Rankings), 111th (2024 Times Higher Education World University Rankings), and 157th (2023 Academic Ranking of World Universities).

The World University Rankings report shows the University of Adelaide's ranking performance from 2015 onwards with comparative data for South Australian, G08 and all Australian universities.

World University Rankings Dashboard

Methodology

Each of these schemes aims to rank institutions against their peers using a variety of performance indicators. Data used to calculate performance is either supplied directly by institutions through an annual data collection process, or is sourced from publicly-available information such as government-published statistics or research/citations databases such as Scopus.

  • ARWU ranking

    The ARWU ranking scheme uses six indicators of academic and research performance which are summarised in the table below.

    All indicators are derived from a given institution’s score as a percentage of the score of the top ranked institution in that indicator and are based on data obtained from publicly-available sources. Individual indicator scores are weighted to generate an aggregate overall score.

    Indicator Weight
    Alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes & Fields Medals
    (age discounted prizes by graduates since 1911)    		 10%
    Staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals
    (age discounted prizes since 1921)    		 20%
    Highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate Analytics 20%
    Papers published in Nature and Science
    (greatest credit for first author)    		 20%
    Papers indexed in Science Citation Index-expanded & Social Science Citation Index 20%
    Per capita academic performance of an institution
    (weighted scores for above indicators/staff FTE number)    		 10%

    Data sources for the compilation of the ARWU are summarised below:

    A full breakdown of the methodology used to compile the most recent, and previous years', rankings can be found on the AWRU website.

  • QS ranking

    The QS ranking scheme uses several indicators of academic and research performance which are summarised in the table below.

    All indicators are derived from a given institution’s score as a percentage of the score of the top ranked institution in that indicator and are based on a mixture of data supplied directly by each institution, publicly available data and also the results of two surveys run by QS – measuring academic reputation and employer reputation.

    Indicator Weight
    Academic Reputation - based on the responses to a survey distributed to academics worldwide 30%
    Employer Reputation - based on a survey distributed to employers to determine their opinion on the quality of graduates 15%
    Faculty/Student Ratio - the ratio of full-time equivalent faculty to full-time equivalent students 10%
    Citations per Faculty - Citations count for previous 5 years per full-time equivalent faculty count 20%
    International Faculty Ratio - the proportion of faculty members that are international 5%
    International Student Ratio - the proportion of students that are international

    5%
    International Research Network - based on the number of international authors and countries in co-author network 5%
    Employment Outcomes - based on 15 month graduate employment rate and alumni appearing on 'success' lists 5%
    Sustainability - based on an institution's score in the QS Sustainability Rankings 5%

    All bibliometric and citations data for the compilation of the QS Rankings is sourced from Elsevier’s Scopus database.

    A full breakdown of the methodology used to compile the most recent, and previous years', rankings can be found on the QS website.

  • THE ranking

    The Times Higher Education methodology uses 17 indicators within five broader ‘pillars’ of Teaching, Research, International Mix, Industry Income and Citations (see the table below).

    The pillar scores are weighted to generate an overall score for each institution.

    All indicators are derived from a given institution’s score as a percentage of the score of the top ranked institution in that indicator and are based on a mixture of data supplied directly by each institution, publicly available data and also the results of two surveys run by THE – measuring academic reputation and research reputation.

    Pillar
    (Weight)    		 Indicator
    (Weight)
    Teaching (29.5%) Undergraduate per academic (4.5%)
    Reputation survey (15%)
    PhDs awarded per academic (5.5%)
    Institutional income per academic (2.5%)
    PhDs/undergraduate degrees awarded (2%)
    Research (46%)

    Reputation survey (18%)
    Research income per academic (5.5%)
    Publications per academic (5.5%)
    Research strength (5%)
    Research excellence (5%)
    Research influence (5%)
    Patents (2%)
    International mix (7.5%) Ratio of international to domestic students (2.5%)
    Ratio of international to domestic staff (2.5%)
    Proportion of internationally co-authored research papers (2.5%)
    Industry income (2%) Research income from public industry per academic (2%)
    Citations (15%) Citation impact (15%)

    All bibliometric and citations data for the compilation of the QS Rankings is sourced from Elsevier’s Scopus database.  

    A full breakdown of the methodology used to compile the most recent, and previous years', rankings can be found on the THE website.