• The University of Melbourne and University of Sydney were again ranked as Australia’s best universities on Monday.
• Coming in at number 63 and 98 on the global rankings respectively, they and most Australian institutions lost ground on previous years, according to the Centre for World University Rankings (CWUR)
• With fewer international students able to study in-country, many institutions are feeling the heat as funding from tuition shrinks.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

The best universities in Australia are slipping in international standing, with the number of top 100 universities halving in the space of two years.

In the latest rankings published on Monday, Melbourne University once again secured country’s highest place, coming in at number 63. The University of Sydney (USYD) meanwhile just scrapped into the top 100, at number 98.

It marks an improvement for both institutes, with each improving by one and two places respectively on last year’s Centre for World University Rankings (CWUR) results.

Looking more broadly, it’s clear the country’s universities are losing ground after appearing to peak two years ago. In 2018, four universities cracked the top 100 with both Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Queensland (UQ) coming in at 82 or better.

The ascent of other countries have helped push Australia further down the list. The United Kingdom managed to mint ten universities in the top 100 compared to just seven in 2018.

Likewise, Germany squeezed two more into the top 100 and France pushing two more into the top 50.but it’s perhaps China that has most consistently climbed the rankings, getting five more universities into the top 200, and 13 more into the top 400.

In fact, most Australian universities continue to drop further down the list. This year, UQ came in at 106 with the University of New South Wales (UNSW) not far behind at 112. ANU took out 123, Monash ranked at 130, and University of Western Australia finished at 151, placing seven within the top 200. Of those, only Monash actually improved its position from last year.

Beyond that, the University of Adelaide (221), Curtin University (361), Macquarie (378), Griffith University (389), and University of Wollongong (398) all tumbled further down the ladder, while just University of Newcastle at (386) and Deakin (391) improved their places.

The rankings are collated by assessing each university on the quality of education they provide, high-level employment of alumni, the quality of faculties and the research they produce.

Digging into each Australian universities’ scores, it’s clear that each depends heavily on the last of those measures to give them a major boost. Melbourne for example ranks 36th in the world, Sydney 38th, with UQ, UNSW and Monash all in the top 80 for research.

It’s no wonder that this has become the focus of institutions. Making up a disproportionate 40% of their overall score, universities are incentivised to spend heavily on research to maintain or improve their place to the detriment of student facilities or the classroom experience.

With much of that funding in Australia coming from international student fees, and especially Chinese students, the scorecard has been criticised for effectively turning foreign students into “cash cows”.

Closed borders have now shut off that critical source of income for institutions. Threatening to pull as much as $500 million out of individual universities like USYD and Melbourne, it’s unclear whether some will be able to lavish quite so much on their research arms in order to remain globally competitive, at least in terms of world rankings.

The other aspects of the scoreboard are certainly less kind to Australian universities. Not a single one is in the top 100 for education, although this is measured by “the number of a university’s alumni who have won major academic distinctions relative to the university’s size”.

The employment metric similarly only counts those alumni who have held top executive positions in the world’s largest companies. On that front, the University of New South Wales ranks highest for Australia at 111th.

Such a dynamic simply may not see up Australia’s universities for much future success, at least as far as rankings are concerned.

Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.