WELLINGTON, June 8 (Xinhua) -- A senior education official on Thursday welcomed the news that five of New Zealand's eight universities have improved their ranking in the annual Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings.
"These results are positive news for our world class tertiary education system, with all eight of our universities ranked in the top 450 for the second year running," Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Minister Paul Goldsmith said in a statement.
First published in 2005, the QS ranking examines universities across areas such as reputation, teaching, research and internationalization to determine an overall ranking for over 900 universities.
"This reflects the steady progress we are constantly making to raise the quality of our universities, and the investments into high-quality research by the government," Goldsmith said.
Five of the eight New Zealand universities improved their ranking from last year, two remained unchanged, and one dropped a single place. All eight New Zealand universities remain ranked inside the top 450.
Among them, the University of Auckland ranks 82, down 1 place from last year; the University of Otago ranks 151, up 18 places on last year; the University of Canterbury ranks 214, unchanged from last year; the Victoria University of Wellington ranks 219, up 9 places from last year; the University of Waikato ranks 292, up 32 places from last year; Massey University ranks 316, up 24 places from last year; Lincoln University ranks 319, up 24 places from last year; and Auckland University of Technology ranked among 441-450, unchanged from last year.
Goldsmith said the government is committed to investing in quality tertiary education, with a 132.1 million-NZ dollar (95.2 million-U.S. dollar) investment in tertiary education through Budget 2017.
