Australia in QS 2027: Rank Distribution and Indicator Gaps
Australia places 37 institutions in the QS World University Rankings 2027, out of a global list of 1,504 universities across 106 countries and territories. That is 2.5% of the global total. The country’s top-ranked entry is The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), at rank 19.
The headline numbers are easy to state. The harder question — the one that matters if you are using this ranking to compare institutions — is how those 37 are spread across the table, and whether the reputation indicators behind them tell the same story as the ranks do.
Where Australia’s 37 institutions actually sit
The distribution is heavily weighted toward the top and then thins out.
Six Australian institutions are in the top 50. Nine are in the top 100, 11 in the top 150, 13 in the top 200, 19 in the top 300, 22 in the top 400, and 27 in the top 500. At the other end, 10 institutions sit beyond the top 500, and 2 sit beyond the top 1000.
Read as bands rather than cumulative counts, the shape is clearer. Six institutions fall in the 1–50 band, 3 in 51–100, 2 in 101–150, 2 in 151–200, 6 in 201–300, 3 in 301–400, and 5 in 401–500. A further 5 sit in 501–700. The 701–1000 band and the 1001-and-beyond band each record zero Australian institutions in the banded counts, though QS publishes narrower ranges — 851–900, 951–1000, and 1201–1400 — that account for institutions whose exact position is not given.
The median rank across the 37 is 291.0. That single figure captures the tension in the list: a strong cluster at the top pulls the eye, but the midpoint of the country’s presence sits well outside the top 200.
The top of the table
The concentration at the top is the most striking feature. Six institutions in the top 50, and nine in the top 100, means roughly a quarter of Australia’s listed institutions sit inside the world’s top 100.
| QS 2027 Rank | Institution | QS 2026 Rank | Change | Academic Reputation | Employer Reputation | Overall Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 | The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney) | 20 | ↑1 | 96.5 | 94.3 | 89.8 |
| 22 | The University of Melbourne | 19 | ↓3 | 99.7 | 98.3 | 89.6 |
| 28 | The University of Sydney | 25 | ↓3 | 99 | 95.5 | 88.4 |
| 29 | Australian National University (ANU) | 32 | ↑3 | 97.9 | 84.9 | 87.6 |
| 31 | Monash University | 36 | ↑5 | 96.2 | 91.5 | 87 |
| 40 | The University of Queensland | 42 | ↑2 | 94.7 | 83.2 | 84.6 |
| 77 | The University of Western Australia | 77 | no change | 69.9 | 55.6 | 73.7 |
| 79 | Adelaide University | 82 | ↑3 | 78.6 | 66 | 73.6 |
| 87 | University of Technology Sydney | 96 | ↑9 | 60.9 | 69.2 | 70.5 |
| 119 | RMIT University | 125 | ↑6 | 57.5 | 58.4 | 65.6 |
| 126 | Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) | 138 | ↑12 | 51.1 | 62.3 | 65 |
| 189 | Curtin University | 183 | ↓6 | 47.5 | 37.6 | 56.9 |
| 195 | University of Wollongong | 184 | ↓11 | 41 | 31.2 | 56.6 |
| 227 | Deakin University | 207 | ↓20 | 43.1 | 33.3 | 53.2 |
| 230 | Griffith University | 268 | ↑38 | 40.4 | 23.5 | 53 |
| 240 | Queensland University of Technology (QUT) | 226 | ↓14 | 50.7 | 38.9 | 52.3 |
| 241 | La Trobe University | 233 | ↓8 | 33 | 33.7 | 52.2 |
| 244 | The University of Newcastle, Australia (UON) | 227 | ↓17 | 34.9 | 32.1 | 51.9 |
| 291 | Swinburne University of Technology | 294 | ↑3 | 20.1 | 17.8 | 46.7 |
| 311 | University of Tasmania | 314 | ↑3 | 23.3 | 12.8 | 44.5 |
That table also carries the reputation indicators, and this is where the distribution stops being a simple story of rank. Academic reputation and employer reputation are survey-based scores, and they do not move in lockstep with rank position.
What the reputation scores show
All 37 listed Australian institutions have a published academic reputation score, and all 37 have a published employer reputation score. That is a fuller picture than the overall score gives — more on that below.
Academic reputation is top-heavy. Six institutions score 90 or higher, and no institution scores in the 80–89 band. One sits in the 70–79 band, 2 in 60–69, 3 in 50–59, 4 in 40–49, 2 in 30–39, and 5 in 20–29.
Employer reputation is similarly concentrated at the very top but shaped differently underneath. Four institutions score 90 or higher, 2 sit in the 80–89 band, and none sit in the 70–79 band. Three are in 60–69, 2 in 50–59, none in 40–49, 6 in 30–39, and 2 in 20–29.
The gap worth noting: academic reputation has 6 institutions at 90 or above, employer reputation has 4. Below that, employer reputation has a cluster of 6 institutions in the 30–39 band where academic reputation has only 2. The two indicators are measuring different things, and for a chunk of the Australian list they diverge.
If you are comparing institutions on reputation rather than rank, the cumulative counts make the divergence concrete. Nine institutions score 60 or higher on academic reputation; 9 also score 60 or higher on employer reputation. But at the 30-or-higher threshold, 18 institutions clear it on academic reputation against 17 on employer reputation, and at 20 or higher the counts are 23 and 19 respectively.
Movement against QS 2026
Of the 37 institutions listed in QS 2027, 31 have an exact rank in both editions and can therefore be compared. Within that comparable group, 20 improved, 10 declined, and 1 was unchanged.
Five institutions cannot be compared because their rank is a range in at least one of the two editions. Those five are excluded from the movement counts entirely — they are neither improvements nor declines in this data.
One caution on reading these numbers. The comparable group of 31 is not Australia’s total in QS 2026. The data covers only institutions listed in QS 2027 and their prior-edition rank; institutions ranked in 2026 but absent from the 2027 list are not counted here. So this cannot be written as a rise or fall in Australia’s overall presence between the two editions. What it does show is that, among the institutions that appear in both, improvements outnumber declines.
The prior-edition counts for the current list are also worth setting out, because they show how stable the top of the table has been. Of the institutions listed in QS 2027, 6 were also in the top 50 in QS 2026, 9 were in the top 100, 11 in the top 150, 13 in the top 200, 19 in the top 300, 22 in the top 400, 28 in the top 500, 31 in the top 700, and 34 in the top 1000. One institution in the current list had no QS 2026 rank at all.
Compare those with the QS 2027 counts and the top of the table is essentially unchanged: 6 in the top 50 in both editions, 9 in the top 100 in both, 13 in the top 200 in both. The movement is further down. The top 500 count goes from 28 in QS 2026 to 27 in QS 2027 among currently listed institutions — a difference of one, and not a like-for-like comparison of the country’s total in either year.
| Rank Band | Institutions |
|---|---|
| Global top 50 | 6 |
| Global top 100 | 9 |
| Global top 200 | 13 |
| Global top 500 | 27 |
| All ranked | 37 |
The overall score is not published for everyone
QS publishes an overall score for only a leading subset of ranked institutions. For Australia, 32 of the 37 listed institutions have a published overall score; 5 do not.
This matters more than it might appear. A missing overall score does not mean the institution scored below some threshold, and it does not mean it was dropped from the ranking. It is still ranked. The lowest rank with a published overall score in the Australian list is 696 — and globally, the lowest rank with a published overall score is also 696, out of 700 institutions worldwide that received one.
So any statement about Australia’s score distribution covers only the 32 institutions with a published score. It says nothing about the remaining 5, and nothing about where they would sit if a score were published.
Data notes
The figures here come from the QS World University Rankings 2027, published by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), with a data reference date of 2026-06-18. The full ranking covers 1,504 institutions.
The counts were produced by filtering the QS 2027 ranking by country/territory, tallying institutions by rank band, taking the median rank, and comparing the ranks of the same institutions against QS 2026. Where an institution’s rank is given as a range (for example, 601–610), the comparison uses the lower bound of the range.
Three boundaries are worth keeping in mind when using these numbers.
First, rank ranges. QS publishes only a range for some institutions, with no exact rank. An institution counts as within the top N only when the upper bound of its range is at most N — a 51–100 range counts as within the top 100. Where a range straddles the threshold, the institution can neither be counted inside the top N nor described as outside it. Ranges are not used for medians, averages, or rank movement.
Second, the median. The median rank of 291.0 is calculated across the 37 listed institutions.
Third, score coverage. The reputation bands cover only institutions whose score in that indicator was published. The overall-score figures cover only the 32 Australian institutions with a published overall score, and say nothing about the 5 without one.