By Jack Cross
The University of Western Australia is amongst seventeen Australian universities to have lost places in the 2025 Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings.
The latest rankings, published this morning, list 38 Australian universities in the database of 2,092 entries. One Australian educator was listed for the first time, and only two improved their rankings. The bulk of the Australian institutions falling down the list are those at the higher end of our country’s offerings, including many of the Group of Eight.
UWA has fallen from 143rd to 149th, maintaining its 8th place nationwide. The University of Melbourne maintains its place as best in Australia at 39th worldwide, although it fell from 37th.
THE claims to be the most comprehensive university ranking and assess eighteen indicators. Australian losses are primarily attributed to falls in teaching and research reputation and funding levels.
The THE rankings are considered amongst the most authoritative alongside the Shanghai Ranking and QS World University Rankings. UWA dropped out of the top 100 in the Shanghai Ranking after 2022 and remained in the 101–150 range in the 2023 and 2024 issues of the ranking. QS ranked UWA 77th in its 2025 issue, an improvement from its recent low of 93rd in 2022, but a fall from its position at 72nd in this year’s.
Although these rankings are influential and widely used by universities themselves, they have been criticized for unclear or biased methodologies that can fail to correctly represent an institution’s performance.
It’s not clear what practical consequences (if any) this decline represents for UWA students, either in terms of education quality or future prospects. UWA remains the top-ranked university in WA in all three major rankings, so by this (perhaps flawed) measure it remains the best choice for the majority of students who study in their home state. It’s possible UWA’s performance could be unchanged in the last year, and its fall could be attributed solely to changes in methodology or in the performance of other universities elsewhere in the world.