Australia places 13 universities in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. That is the country’s full footprint in this subject: 13 ranked institutions, the same count as mainland China, behind the United States (41) and the United Kingdom (22), and ahead of India and Spain (8 each).
The headline number for anyone choosing a country first and a programme second is this: Australia’s best placement is 31st, held by The University of Melbourne. No Australian institution reaches the global top 30 in this subject.
How deep is Australia’s bench in this subject?
The distribution matters more than the top line. Of the 13 Australian institutions on the list:
- 5 are within the global top 50
- 9 are within the global top 100
- 4 have a published rank band of 101–200
That last group needs care. QS publishes only a rank range for some institutions rather than an exact position. A band of 101–200 straddles the top-150 line, so those four institutions can be counted inside the top 200 but not inside the top 150, and they cannot be described as sitting outside the top 150 either. Their exact positions are simply not published at that granularity.
The same logic runs the other way at the top: all 13 Australian institutions fall within the global top 200, and none sits in the top 30.
A median rank for the Australian group cannot be calculated. The institution sitting at the middle position holds only a published range of 51–100, and QS does not break that range down further, so no single median figure exists for this cohort.
What the country comparison shows
The country leaderboard puts Australia’s 13 in context. The subject list spans 201 institutions across 37 countries and territories.
| Country/Region | Ranked Institutions |
|---|---|
| United States of America | 41 |
| United Kingdom | 22 |
| China (Mainland) | 13 |
| Australia | 13 |
| India | 8 |
| Spain | 8 |
| Canada | 7 |
| Italy | 7 |
| Malaysia | 7 |
| Hong Kong SAR, China | 6 |
Two readings follow. First, Australia’s count of 13 is matched by mainland China and exceeded only by the United States and the United Kingdom. Second, the countries immediately below Australia — India, Spain, Canada, Italy, Malaysia — sit in the 7-to-8 range, so Australia’s position near the top of the table rests on a modest numerical margin, not a wide one.
For a reader who has already decided on Australia, the practical question is whether the country offers a genuine ladder of options rather than one or two strong names. Nine institutions inside the global top 100, out of 13 ranked, suggests the depth is real. The gap at the very top is equally real: the climb from 31st into the top 30 is not represented by any Australian entry in this edition.
What the scores do and do not tell you
QS publishes an overall score only for a leading subset of ranked institutions. In this subject, 5 of Australia’s 13 ranked universities have a published overall score; the remaining 8 are listed with a rank or rank band but no score.
That distinction matters when reading any score-based claim. A missing overall score does not mean an institution scored below a threshold, and it does not mean the institution was dropped from the ranking. It is still ranked. Score bands describe only the institutions whose scores were published, and say nothing about the rest.
Among the Australian institutions with a published score, the picture is tight:
- 1 institution scores in the 80–89 band
- 4 institutions score in the 70–79 band
- None scores 90 or above
Cumulatively, 5 Australian institutions score 70 or higher, and 1 scores 80 or higher.
Across the Australian entries in the global top 50, the published overall scores run from 76.3 to 80.6. The same range applies to the top 100 group, because the additional institutions in that wider group do not have a published overall score. In other words, the score range covers 5 institutions within a top-100 group of 9 — the other 4 are ranked without a published score.
| Subject Rank | Institution | Country/Region | Academic Reputation | Employer Reputation | Citations | Overall Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 | The University of Melbourne | Australia | 81 | 80.4 | 84.7 | 80.6 |
| 38 | The University of Sydney | Australia | 73.7 | 73.8 | 94.5 | 79 |
| 44 | Australian National University (ANU) | Australia | 74.8 | 72.8 | 92 | 77.2 |
| 45 | University of Technology Sydney | Australia | 71 | 69.5 | 96.2 | 76.9 |
| 48 | Monash University | Australia | 69 | 74 | 93.4 | 76.3 |
| 51-100 | The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney) | Australia | 67.6 | 74.1 | 88.6 | — |
| 51-100 | Adelaide University | Australia | 64.5 | 66.2 | 97.2 | — |
| 51-100 | RMIT University | Australia | 68.9 | 69.2 | 83.8 | — |
| 51-100 | The University of Queensland | Australia | 64.4 | 68.7 | 89.5 | — |
| 101-200 | Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) | Australia | 62.5 | 65.5 | 87.6 | — |
| 101-200 | Deakin University | Australia | 57.4 | 57.6 | 89.6 | — |
| 101-200 | Queensland University of Technology (QUT) | Australia | 63.8 | 52.6 | 84.9 | — |
| 101-200 | The University of Western Australia | Australia | 50.6 | 62.9 | 91.1 | — |
Reading the rank bands correctly
The band structure for Australia in this subject is unusually clean, and it is worth stating plainly because rank ranges are easy to misread.
Five Australian institutions hold exact ranks in the 31–50 range. Four hold a published band of 51–100. Four hold a published band of 101–200. Nothing sits in the 1–10, 11–20, 21–30, 201–300 or 301-and-beyond groups.
This is why statements like “all Australian entries are in the top 100” would be wrong, and so would “no Australian entry is outside the top 100.” The four institutions in the 101–200 band are inside the top 200 but their positions are not published finely enough to place them on either side of the top-150 line.
Rank movement between editions is not covered here. Comparing positions across years requires exact ranks in both editions, and institutions published only as a range cannot support that comparison.
What this means for choosing a programme
If the country decision is already made, the Australian data supports a few concrete observations.
There is a genuine top tier of five institutions inside the global top 50, led by The University of Melbourne at 31st. There is a second tier of four more inside the top 100. And there is a further group of four ranked in the 101–200 band, which keeps them inside the global top 200 without a published exact position.
The absence of any Australian entry in the global top 30 is the clearest limitation in this edition. It does not mean the programmes are weak; it means the very top of this subject globally is held elsewhere in the 2026 table.
Data notes
The figures in this article come from the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026, published by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), with a data reference date of 2026-04-03. The subject ranking covers 60 disciplinary tables and includes indicator scores for academic reputation, employer reputation, citations, H-index and international research network.
The counts here are drawn from the full ranked list for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, filtered to Australia. Institutions whose position is published as a range are counted according to the upper bound of that range: a band of 51–100 counts as within the top 100, while a band of 101–200 counts as within the top 200 but neither inside nor outside the top 150. Ranges are not used to compute medians, averages or year-on-year movement, which is why no median rank is given for the Australian group.
Overall scores are published by QS for only a leading subset of ranked institutions. In this subject, 5 of the 13 Australian entries carry a published overall score and 8 do not. Score bands and cumulative score counts therefore describe only those 5 institutions and cannot be extended to the remaining 8. A university listed without an overall score is still ranked; the absence of a score is not an indication of quality, threshold or removal from the table.
Readers who want to check individual entries, indicator scores and the full country breakdown can consult the QS World University Rankings by Subject pages maintained by Quacquarelli Symonds.