La Trobe University remains one of the top institutions in the world to study Nursing with the subject now ranked equal 42 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025, reflecting the University’s significant focus on health innovation, which includes a $170 million investment.
The ranking is an improvement of two places on last year’s result and joins Sports-related Subjects in the top 50 for the second consecutive year after it ranked equal 47, while Archaeology maintained its position in the top 100 subjects for the ninth year.
Nursing now ranks third in Victoria and equal sixth in Australia. After entering the rankings for the first time last year, Medicine also continued to rank well, placing in the top 250 band and ranked third in Victoria and equal 10th nationally.
La Trobe Vice-Chancellor Professor Theo Farrell said the strong results particularly reflected the significant investment the University is making in health innovation across its teaching and research, which will also help a critical skills shortage in the health sector.
“Our $170 million health innovation investment will deliver multiple new facilities across Victoria, including the already operational Nursing and Midwifery clinical simulation facilities in Bundoora, Bendigo, Wodonga and Mildura, and a new Dentistry and Oral Health Clinical School in Bendigo,” Professor Farrell said.
“The University is also investing heavily in research to support key areas of health innovation, including in rural health and through the Care Economy Research Institute (CERI).”
The University again posted strong results in other areas, with Anthropology ranked in the top 170, Hospitality and Leisure Management top 175, and Education, Psychology and Sociology are all in the 200.
Several subjects saw impressive improvements on the previous year, with Modern Languages, Pharmacy and Pharmacology, Economics and Econometrics, Business and Management Studes, Computer Science and Information Systems, and Physics and Astronomy all climbing in the rankings.
Professor Farrell said the strong results across a broad range of subjects, with 14 subjects in the world’s top 250, demonstrated the importance of providing access to a diverse choice of higher education across regional and metropolitan areas.
He said La Trobe is making a significant $190 million investment to build state-of-the-art facilities and upgrade existing teaching centres across its Victorian campuses, including more than $30 million to increase the capacity of clinical simulation suites in Bendigo, Mildura and Albury-Wodonga. A further $21 million is being spent to establish a new rural dentistry and oral health clinical education facility in central Bendigo.
Last month La Trobe opened its renovated and extended campus in Shepparton, which will provide improved amenities for students and staff in regional communities and better connect the community to the campus’ high-tech research and teaching facilities.
“This $20 million Shepparton Reimagined Project, supported by the Australian Government, offers greater opportunities for education, research and community engagement, helping build skills that meet industry needs, support critical workforce demands and drive growth and innovation in regional Victoria,” Professor Farrell said.
“I am delighted to see La Trobe’s excellence in education and research once again recognised by these positive results in the QS World rankings.”
Other La Trobe highlights include:
Top 50 subjects
- Nursing (=42, 3 in Victoria, =6 in Australia)
- Sports-related subjects (=47, 3 in Victoria, 9 in Australia)
Top 100
- Archaeology (=2 in Victoria, =5 in Australia)
Top 200
- Anthropology (=3 in Victoria, =5 in Australia)
- Hospitality and Leisure Management (2 in Victoria, =6 in Australia)
- Education (=4 in Victoria, =9 in Australia)
- Sociology (4 in Victoria, equal 8 in Australia)
- Psychology (=4 in Victoria, =8 in Australia)
Top 250
- Medicine (3 in Victoria, =10 in Australia)
- Law (=3 in Victoria, =10 in Australia)
- History (=3 in Victoria, =7 in Australia)
- Linguistics (3 in Victoria, =7 in Australia)
- Modern Languages (3 in Victoria, 9 in Australia)
- Communication and Media Studies (5 in Victoria, =8 in Australia)
About the QS rankings:
The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025 were produced by analysis of reputation and research output. 1,747 global institutions were ranked across 55 narrow subjects and 5 broad subject areas using a set of indicators with variable weights. Those indicators are academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per paper, H-Index and international research network.
