The Best Australian Universities
Dec 22nd, 2008 by GCR Editor
The Google-method of ranking colleges and universities works best for relatively large countries with a reasonable number of institutions of higher education. Australia is certainly such a country, and this initial league table—assembled as usual by means of a clean browser, this time searching via google.com.au—will serve as a basis for future comment and comparison:
- University of Sydney
- Monash University
- University of Queensland
- Griffith University
- University of Melbourne
- Macquarie University
- University of Newcastle
- University of Adelaide
- University of New South Wales
- RMIT University
It’s interesting to note that many of these universities include the word “Australia” in the HTML <title> of their webpages. The page title isn’t simply “The University of Queensland” but “The University of Queensland, Australia”; not “The University of Melbourne” but “The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.”
In something of a contrast: while the webpage for RMIT University does tell us in its <title> element that it is in Melbourne, Australia, even if you go to the page itself you’ll have a hard time finding out what “RMIT” stands for. Some kind of institute of technology perhaps? Radical Metaphysical Institute of Technology? Republican Military Institute of Technology? Real Mellow Institute of Technology? Only Australians know for sure, and they’re not eager to have the rest of the world find out.
It stands for Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Duly noted though, will add that back in to our about page, which was updated and has been accidentally removed. Thanks for pointing out.
Excellent, thank you! (We’re just getting underway, and already we’ve performed a useful service. This is promising.)
In my experience, the websites with the greatest identity problems are those of local newspapers. I’ve lost track of how many times a search has landed me on the website of “The Evening Mirror-Sentinel, Your News Source for the Johnson-Lawndale Twin-City Area,” and been unable to tell if I was reading news from California, Florida, or Nebraska. The web really is worldwide, and local people everywhere often don’t realize what foreigners (sensu lato) don’t know.
[...] University of Technology University”). This same problem was found in our first attempt to rank Australian universities: what was “RMIT University”? It may be true that everyone in Australia knows, but not [...]