The 2010s were a halcyon decade for Australia's leading universities. Australia now has seven universities in the global top 100, according to the industry-standard Academic Ranking of World Universities, compared with just three in 2010. Almost the entire G8 is now in the global top 100, with the sole exception of Adelaide.

Reflecting the biases of Chinese sponsors, the ARWU is based entirely on hard research metrics. There's no mucking about with reputation surveys or student satisfaction. It's all about Nobel prizes, citation counts, and papers in prestigious journals. Your award-winning Oxford University Press book on Aristotle's metaphysics doesn't even get counted.

So how did Australian universities, with their real (but uncounted) strengths in the humanities, law, music, and art, rise to third in the world in the science-heavy ARWU rankings?

In a word: money. For the past two decades, Australia's top universities have been buying up top researchers from around the world, offering them world-class facilities and teaching-free career tracks in exchange for bringing their publication portfolios to Australia. As a result, the country is now a research powerhouse to rival the United Kingdom.