…is the University of Auckland, according to the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings (developed in association with Thomson Reuters – charging outrageous journal prices since 1872…). You can even check out a cheesy video of the top 10.

The rankings for NZ institutions are below. Now for some reason, THE has withheld 2010 ranking data for those outside the top 200. Luckily for you, I downloaded their iPhone application last year (I know, I’m a tertiary geek – I downloaded this year’s one too). I’ve popped in the missing 2010 rankings for comparison and italicised them (Waikato wasn’t in the top 400 last year). As you can see, pretty much everyone has dropped (Insert your pre-existing rationale for why here. Insert media release from Stuart McCutcheon calling for more government funding here.) except for Otago and Waikato, which increased for some reason (Insert media release from Otago, and maybe Waikato, here…). THE actually did provide some rationale for the ranking drop for Auckland, noting a “poor” amount of research in comparison to other universities.

The rankings are based on an overall score, derived from 5 dimensions measured out of 100. Three of the dimensions are each worth 30% – unfortunately that doesn’t include International Outlook, on which all our universities do really well. Of course, we do well on the international measures partly because we’re the cheapest English-speaking developed country, so we get lots of international students looking for a good deal (and we attract international staff, and do research with offshore colleagues too). We don’t do as well on the others because we don’t have the domestic resources to build great institutions (and we don’t concentrate them in 1-2 universities).

The detailed rankings are below. THE only provided overall scores for the top 200, but since the overall score is a simple weighting of the section scores, I’ve calculated it for you and italicised my figures (NB Massey didn’t have an Industry Income score). I tried to compare the scores to last year’s results, but they have changed the methodology and weighting and I couldn’t be bothered doing all the legwork for a possibly unclear comparison.