The University of Melbourne and the Australian National University are the top two universities in Australia and amongst the world’s best according to the latest annual QS World University Rankings by Subject.

The QS University Rankings is a comprehensive guide to the world’s top universities in a range of popular subject areas. The ranking is largely based on a survey of academics view of the reputation of the universities. To a lesser extent the rankings also takes into account other data like the number of times the university is cited in research publications and the student ratios.

The rankings highlight the 200 top universities in the world for 30 individual subjects.

The University of Melbourne demonstrated its consistency as Australia’s best by once again being named Australia’s best performing university. It was placed first nationally in 12 of the 30 disciplines.

According to a report in The Australian, Melbourne's best performance was in education, where it was named the second best faculty in the world, behind the University of London’s Institute of Education, up from third last year. Melbourne also took the crown as Australia’s most comprehensive university, named in the top five in 29 of the 30 disciplines. Melbourne was particularly strong in science, maths and technology subjects, ranking first nationally in eight of the 16 subject areas.

The Australian National University, dominated in the arts and humanities, ranking first nationally and in the top 20 globally in five of the six subject areas. But the dominance of Melbourne and ANU, along with Sydney, Monash, the University of Queensland and the University of NSW, left little room for other institutions that excel in their fields.

Macquarie University was the only university to achieve two top five positions in philosophy and earth and marine sciences.

Six other universities were placed in the top five nationally in one subject each: Curtin and the University of Western Australia (earth and marine sciences); La Trobe (history); Deakin (education); Adelaide (agriculture and forestry); Wollongong (materials science) and QUT (communication and media studies)

Asian universities are the rising stars in the rankings and accounts for 10 of the top 30 institutions in chemical, civil and electrical engineering, and eight in mechanical engineering. Undoubtedly, institutions in Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Japan now pose a real threat to Australia’s dominance in education in the Asia-Pacific region.

Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) is a British company specialising in education and study abroad. The company was founded in 1990 by Nunzio Quacquarelli. The publication is one of the three most influential and widely observed international university rankings, alongside the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the Academic Ranking of World Universities.