New Zealand universities shine in latest international rankings

All eight New Zealand universities have gone up in the rankings in the 2024 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings and all are in the top 500 universities in the world.

UNIVERSITY WORLD RANKINGS	2023	2024	Change
University of Auckland	87	68	+19
University of Otago	217	206	+11
Massey University	292	239	+53
Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington	275	241	+34
Waikato University	331	250	+81
University of Canterbury	284	256	+28
Lincoln University	368	362	+6
Auckland University of Technology	486	407	+79

The welcome result comes at a time when New Zealand universities have been struggling under increasing financial pressures.

QS Rankings compare subjects from over 1400 universities worldwide, and consider key indicators such as academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty research citations and impact. This year an additional three indicators have been included in QS’s methodology: international research network, employment outcomes, and sustainability. 

Universities New Zealand Chief Executive Chris Whelan says, “The updated approach has had a positive impact on how New Zealand’s universities have fared in the rankings overall.”  

“Before this year, QS was very focussed on research citations and academic reputations and they made up 60% of how rankings were assessed. By contrast, one of the things measured by QS that was really important to students was the reputation of the university with employers. This made up just 10% of the overall score awarded to a university.” 

“From this year onwards, academic reputation drops from 40% to 30% and research citations remains at 20%. The reputation of a university with employers increases to 15% and several new metrics are added.”

“QS’s new methodology is a better reflection of the things that most students care about and want to know when choosing where to study.” 

“These are also things that New Zealand universities have always cared about and focussed on. We are not surprised that this change in methodology has resulted in such significant improvements to the rankings of New Zealand’s eight universities.” 

Whelan says, “The big challenge now will be maintaining these rankings. Under the previous system our rankings were slowly dropping as a consequence of a fall in funding per student.

Other countries have been investing more in their universities and it’s been harder and harder to maintain the quality of our teaching and research.” 

“For example, in 2019 funding per student was 27% higher in Australia, 60% higher in Canada, 73% higher in the United Kingdom, and 97% higher in the United States.”

Read the 2024 global QS rankings here.

For more information contact comms@universitiesnz.ac.nz or +64 27 636 5050.