UQ top ranked for teaching quality
The University of Queensland has been recognised as one of the best teaching institutions in the nation and the top-performing university in Queensland in an official Federal Government assessment.
Results of the 2007 round of the
Learning and Teaching Performance Fund, announced December 2006, saw UQ
receive the second highest amount of all universities in the nation and more
than five times the amount of all other Queensland universities combined.
This follows similar success in the 2006 round
announced in August 2005.
Government data is used to rank the quality of
learning and teaching at 38 publicly-funded Australian universities in four
discipline groups, one of which is Science, Computing, Engineering, Architecture
and Agriculture. UQ outranked Griffith, QUT and other Queensland
universities not only in this discipline group, but in the other three groups as
well. Such consistency in quality in a comprehensive university like UQ
helps to ensure that our elective and dual degree options are as strong as our
core ICT and Engineering programs.
Seven separate indicators of learning and teaching quality were used to allocate
the funding including: graduates` views of the enhancement of their generic
skills, of teaching quality and of their overall satisfaction with their
university program; the percentage of graduates in full-time employment; those
continuing to further full-time study; drop-out rates; and pass rates.
UQ was the first university in Australia to introduce a scheme rewarding
teaching excellence and UQ has been the recipient of far more awards than any other
university in the national Australian Awards for University Teaching.
Good Universities Guide
The results are reinforced by the fact that UQ has again received the best overall rating of all Queensland universities and one of the best Australian university rankings in the 2007 edition of the Good Universities Guide (GUG), an independent consumer guide that provides ratings, rankings, comment and information about Australian higher education institutions.
UQ received the maximum five-star rating for six key GUG indicators including 'student demand', 'positive graduate outcomes' (reflecting both graduate employment and continuation to further study), 'staff qualifications', 'research grants', 'research intensiveness' and 'toughness to get in' (St Lucia campus).
Which is the real university when it comes to teaching?
The following table of rankings was published in the Australian newspaper's Higher Education supplement, 13 December 2006, quoting the Government's statistics as the source:
| 2007 Rank | University | 2006 Rank | Change | 2007 grant ($m) | 2007 Rank | University | 2006 Rank | Change | 2007 grant ($m) | |
| 1 | ANU | 6 | +5 | 3.967 | 20 | Curtin | 24 | +4 | 0.500 | |
| 2 | Wollongong | 1 | -1 | 5.418 | 21 | Adelaide | 36 | +15 | 1.342 | |
| 3 | Melbourne | 3 | 0 | 8.908 | 22 | JCU | 30 | +8 | 0.500 | |
| 4 | UQ | 5 | +1 | 8.050 | 23 | Sun Coast | 20 | -3 | 0.500 | |
| 5 | UWA | 12 | +7 | 4.266 | 24 | Sth Cross | 28 | +4 | 0.500 | |
| 6 | UTS | 18 | +12 | 5.555 | 25 | Victoria | 19 | -6 | 1.878 | |
| 7 | Murdoch | 11 | 4 | 3.330 | 26 | Flinders | 26 | 0 | 1.926 | |
| 8 | UNSW | 32 | +24 | 6.650 | 27 | Griffith | 22 | -5 | 0.500 | |
| 9 | ACU | 13 | 5 | 0.500 | 28 | RMIT | 29 | +1 | 0.500 | |
| 10 | Monash | 14 | +4 | 4.254 | 29 | Deakin | 21 | -8 | 0.500 | |
| 11 | Swinburne | 4 | -7 | 2.520 | 30 | La Trobe | 16 | -14 | 2.422 | |
| 12 | Sydney | 10 | -2 | 6.288 | 31 | Sth Aust | 37 | 6 | 0 | |
| 13 | Canberra | 8 | -5 | 1.736 | 32 | ECU | 23 | -9 | 0 | |
| 14 | New Eng | 7 | -7 | 1.507 | 33 | Maritime C. | 2 | -31 | 0 | |
| 15 | Ballarat | 9 | -6 | 1.633 | 34 | USQ | 27 | -7 | 0 | |
| 16 | Macquarie | 15 | -1 | 2.994 | 35 | CQU | 35 | 0 | 0 | |
| 17 | Newcastle | 25 | +8 | 0.500 | 36 | UWS | 33 | -3 | 0 | |
| 18 | CSU | 17 | -1 | 1.462 | 37 | QUT | 31 | -6 | 0 | |
| 19 | UTas | 34 | +15 | 2.434 | 38 | CDU | 38 | 0 | 0 |
You can see the official rankings from the Department of Education here. Band A performers are regarded as 'excellent' by the Government's expert panel.
The detailed data on which the rankings were based is here.