A monumental moment: Monash Faculty of IT soars into the top 100 across the world’s most esteemed rankings

For the first time, Monash University has placed in the global top 100 for Computer Science across three of the world’s most prestigious rankings – Shanghai Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS), Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings.

The Faculty of IT is now proudly 57th in the THE World University Rankings for ‘Computer Science’, 68th in the QS World Universities Rankings for ‘Computer Science and Information Systems’ and 76th in the Shanghai Global Ranking of Academic Subjects for ‘Computer Science and Engineering’.

This milestone trifecta is the first time the Faculty has claimed a top 100 position in all three of these key global rankings.

In the THE rankings, the Faculty has also placed 2nd in Australia, rising from 6th last year. This national and global achievement is yet another success among a series of continual improvements, with the Faculty ranking 314 in 2019 – soaring 257 places in only five years.

These outstanding results can largely be attributed to increases in rankings for citations, research and teaching, reflecting the Faculty’s dual commitment to education and research.

‘I’m extremely proud of our progress in these prestigious rankings, maintaining our quality trajectory especially during the challenges faced by the sector in recent years,’ said Professor Ann Nicholson, Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology.

‘To continually improve and now sit in the top 100 across not one but three esteemed global rankings reflects the consistent excellence of our academics – and nothing speaks more true to the resilience and commitment of our Faculty.’

More broadly, Monash skyrocketed 13 places to rank 44th globally in the 2023 THE World Rankings, cementing the University’s reputation as an international leader among 1799 institutions across 104 countries.

Monash - our world ranking

Global university rankings have become an integral metric and marketing tool for higher education institutions looking to raise their national and international profiles. These rankings aid in competition for future students, postgraduate students, researchers and funding. University rankings are a crucial tool for pursuing international students, educators and researchers who are an essential part of the Monash University makeup.

QS is a leading provider of analytics and insight into the global higher education sector. The QS World University Rankings portfolio is one of the world’s most popular sources of comparative data on university performance, comparing institutions on a host of different criteria including:

  • academic reputation (40%)
  • employer reputation (10%)
  • faculty/student ratio (20%)
  • citations per faculty (20%)
  • international faculty ratio (5%)
  • international studio ratio (5%).

Founded in 2004, the THE World University Rankings are the only global performance tables that evaluate research-intensive universities across all their core missions (teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook) with performance indicators recalibrated according to each subject. For computer science it is as follows:

  • teaching: the learning environment (30%)
  • research: volume, income and reputation (30%)
  • citations: research influence (27.5%)
  • international outlook: staff, students and research (7.5%)
  • industry income: innovation (5%).

The ShanghaiRanking GRAS evaluates universities in 54 subjects across engineering and the natural, life, medical and social sciences. They use a range of objective academic indicators including research output (Q1), research influence, international collaboration, research quality and international academic awards, fine-tuning according to subject. More than 1,800 universities are ranked by the GRAS every year and the best 1000 are published.