World’s largest-ever university subject rankings

Écrit par QS World University Rankings | 22 Mars 2016

Academics and employers name the world’s top universities in 42 disciplines

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London, 22nd March 2016: The sixth edition of the QS World University Rankings by Subject, released today on TopUniversities.com, features a record-breaking 42 disciplines, making it the largest-ever ranking of its kind. Harvard and MIT continue to dominate.

The expert opinion of 76,798 academics and 44,426 employers informed the results, alongside the analysis of 28.5 million research papers and over 113 million citations sourced from the Scopus/Elsevier bibliometric database.

Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) continue to take the lion’s share of top places, leading in 24 subjects between them. Each takes twelve leading positions. However, UK universities have improved their positions overall, with four separate institutions leading in at least one subject. The University of Oxford leads four tables, making it the UK’s most successful university in terms of first-place finishes.

Sixteen different institutions top at least one of the subjects covered in the QS World University Rankings by Subject for 2016.^[1] Universities that are not from the US or UK and lead a subject table include Wageningen University (The Netherlands, Agriculture & Forestry), the University of Hong Kong (Dentistry) and ETH Zurich (Switzerland, Earth & Marine Sciences).

In the six new disciplines ranked, Harvard leads Oxford and Cambridge in Anthropology, while Cambridge leads Oxford and University College London (UCL) in Archaeology. Juilliard tops the table for Performing Arts followed by University of Performing Arts Vienna. Colorado School of Mines tops Mineral Engineering while MIT takes the second spot. University of Pennsylvania leads Nursing followed by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Toronto. Harvard, London School of Economics, and the University of Oxford take the top three spots for Social Policy and Administration.

Nine of the 36 rankings published last year have new leaders, and there are new entries in every one. Some rankings have been enlarged, reflecting the increase in data collected by the QS Intelligence Unit (QSIU).

Ben Sowter, Head of the QS Intelligence Unit, said: “Though the US and UK remain dominant, our most inclusive rankings ever show that excellence can be found in an ever-increasing number of places. Nations like Austria, South Africa, Finland, Brazil, China, and Sweden can be found in the top ten of our tables. Our new top 100 for Performing Arts acknowledges academic excellence in 27 different countries, while our top 100 for Mineral Engineering recognises it in 26.”

The University of Cambridge ranks among the top-ten in 36 disciplines while the University of California, Berkeley follows with 35 top-ten finishes. The University of Oxford finishes in the top ten of 33 subject rankings, as does Stanford University. Harvard follows with 30. MIT takes 22. They are followed by London School of Economics & Politics (LSE), the National University of Singapore, and UCLA with 13, Princeton University with 12, ETH Zurich (11), Yale (10), Imperial College (9), and UCL (8).

The chart below features the universities achieving the most frequent placements within the top-ten outside the UK and USA.

Other universities which have placed among the top-ten at least in one subject include:

Europe (excl. UK): Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Copenhagen Business School, Sciences Po Paris, INSEAD, Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Politecnico di Milano, Utrecht University, Leiden University, University of Amsterdam, University of Gothenburg, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Sibelius Academy (Finland), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and Agro Paris Tech (France).

ROW (excl. USA): University of Alberta (Canada), University of Guelph (Canada), University of British Columbia (Canada), Peking University (China), The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Monash University, The University of Melbourne, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), The University of Sydney, Kyoto University and Tokyo Medical & Dental University (Japan), Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil), and the University of Queensland (Australia).

The chart below illustrates the proportion of universities featuring among the
Top 50 across the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2016.

QS Quacquarelli Symonds have been providing expert insight and analysis for both the higher education sector since 1990. Their QS World University Rankings are the world’s most popular based on Alexa data and other social media metrics. Their annual World University Rankings by Subject provide employers, students, parents, and academics with the most comprehensive insight into global university performance at the subject level. They can be found in their entirety here.