USC outranking competitors in key areas
18 August 2007
International and national rankings have excited a great deal of controversy in the university sector in recent years, and annually they have greater importance attached to them.
The most significant rating system in Australia is the Good Universities Guide, in which every university in the country is marked on a 5-star system across 18 categories.
Every year since USC first appeared in the Guide our overall performance has steadily improved and on key categories we are rated well ahead of older more established universities.
Overall, we had 9, 4 or 5-star ratings across the 17 categories (excludes external studies) on which we were measured. This is quite an extraordinary achievement in so short a period, with so few initial resources.
Consistently across the years, students have rated our teaching quality as 5-star, well ahead of all Brisbane’s major universities. For many students the undergraduate experience at USC is outstanding, a view echoed by the Australian Universities Quality Agency audit earlier this year.
We obviously have a long way to go in matching the GO8 universities in postgraduate research achievements, following decades, or a century, headstart on us, and at times when funding was more generous and less competitive, but we have made an important start and major improvements in performance will become increasingly evident.
But for the great majority of prospective students considering entry to universities, the Guide makes for sobering reading, because it both confirms and dispels some myths about the performance of universities. Students should carefully check the factual information that is accumulating about USC, in particular, and compare it with competitor universities, and there are some real surprises emerging.
For undergraduates, in particular, there are few places in the country that provide the quality of teaching, support services, and electronic access, provided by one of the nation’s best qualified staff, than can be found at USC.
Professor Paul Thomas AM is Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Sunshine Coast.