A look at the EUA’s Global University Rankings Report
by Martin Ince, convener of the QS Academic Advisory Board
Last month the European University Association, the representative body for higher education in 47 European nations, produced its report on Global University Rankings. The media reports suggest that it is critical of rankings while accepting that they are not going to go away. But what is its real message?
Written by Andrejs Rauhvargers of Latvia, the report concedes that students and their advisers find university rankings valuable, and that media and information firms appreciate the interest they raise. (This is certainly true of QS.) For these reasons, rankings local and global are certain to continue.
But despite the useful service that rankings provide for students and other audiences, the EUA report has reservations about their value. It begins by pointing out that the criteria used in rankings are chosen and weighted by the rankings compilers, giving them influence over what counts as university quality.
However, rankings compilers might reply that their criteria, and the weightings applied to them, have to come from somewhere. In the case of the QS rankings, the criteria used have been developed over time to be robust and reliable and to reflect as many aspects as possible of university life. At QS, we also have an active Advisory Board, made up of distinguished academic advisers from around the world who help us to think about these issues.
This misunderstanding is in keeping with the report’s extraordinary ignorance of QS’s World University Rankings. Its author seems not to know that we published the World University Rankings in 2010, the seventh in an unbroken series using comparable methodology. They have been seen by millions of people around the world online and in print. (He has noticed our collaboration with US News and World Report, one of our media partners.) This muddle suggests that at the very least, this report should be withdrawn in its current form and a corrected version should be issued. And incidentally, we have never seen our work as the “European answer to ARWU,” the Shanghai rankings. Read more
New QS World University Rankings by Subject 2011 – Social Sciences
QS World University Rankings by Subject: Economics
Check out the full results by clicking here.
2011 QS World University Rankings® by Subject: Social Sciences
by Danny Byrne
The QS World University Rankings® for Social Sciences completes the first comprehensive set of international rankings at subject level, with 26 disciplines now covered in total. The final batch covers some of the most popular undergraduate degree subjects, many of which have a direct connection to the world of work: Accounting and Finance, Economics, Law, Politics and International Studies, Statistics and Operational Research, and Sociology.
As in the other QS World University Rankings® by Subject, the rankings are based on academic reputation, employer reputation, and research citations. Given the professional application of subjects such as Law and Economics, and the relative lack of published research in journals in comparison to other discipline, employer opinion has been given a significant emphasis in the weightings of the social sciences rankings. The results confirmed that employers have a particular interest in social sciences graduates; the most sought-after graduates among global employers were those in Business, Engineering, Accountancy and Finance, and Economics, two of which fall within the social sciences.
Within the social sciences, employers demonstrated their high regard for London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE), and the results suggest that the university can hold its own with Oxford and Cambridge in the areas in which it specializes. The university’s applied emphasis is obviously successful in producing work-ready graduates, as LSE was ranked in the top five by employers in four of the six Social Sciences subjects. The university ranks in the top ten overall in five of the six subjects, with particular strengths coming in Politics and Economics, in which it ranks 4th.
However, the dominant force at the top of the tables is again Harvard University, which ranks 1st in five of the six subjects, takes its total table topping performance in the 2011 QS World University Rankings® by Subject to a remarkable 16 of the 26 disciplines. The only exception to the Harvard whitewash was Statistics and Operational Research, which is topped by Stanford University. This brings the number of universities that rank first in one of the 26 subjects to five: Harvard (17), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (6), Cambridge (2), with Oxford and Stanford top in one subject each. Read more
QS World University Rankings by Subject 2011 – Social Sciences
Politics and International Studies
We’ve just published our findings in the Social Sciences & Management faculty. Have a look at the full list of subjects here.
QS World University Rankings by Subject 2011: Medicine
by Danny Byrne
Harvard leads an all Anglo-American top five of Cambridge, MIT, Oxford and Stanford in the first QS World University Ranking for Medicine. Universities from 27 countries make the top 200, with the most well-represented nations being the US (54), UK (29), Germany (18), Canada (13) and Australia (11). Imperial College London (9) joins Oxbridge in the top ten, along with an additional four US institutions: Yale (6), UCLA (7), Johns Hopkins University (8) and UC San Diego (10).
Harvard’s triumph follows pioneering work in stem cell research carried out in collaboration with third-placed MIT at the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Faculty. Scopus data shows that the universities’ most widely cited work was in embryonic stem cell research, the subject of a Bush administration funding ban, repealed by Barack Obama in 2009. The universities came first (MIT) and fifth (Harvard) for research citations, while Harvard was the top-scoring university for both academic and employer reputation.
Second-placed Cambridge hit the headlines in 2010 when its long-term work in embryonic stem cell research and IVF led to the Nobel Prize for Professor Martin Evans. The university ranks second for both academic and employer reputation, reflecting the high profile of its medical faculty. Oxford (4) joins it at the top end of the rankings, and was the third most popular university among graduate employers. A further six UK universities made the top 50: Imperial College (9), UCL (25), Edinburgh (27=), King’s College London (30), Manchester (32) and Bristol (48).
Elsewhere in Europe, the leading university was Sweden’s Karolinska Institute (26), a specialist institution that has been at the forefront of medical education since it was founded in 1810. Five other continental European universities make the top 50: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (41) and Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (49=) from Germany, Erasmus University Rotterdam (42=) and Leiden University (42=) of the Netherlands, and Finland’s University of Helsinki (46=). Students will note that while Karolinska Institute was rated the top continental European by academics, University of Copenhagen (51-100) was the most popular among employers.
New 2011 QS World University Rankings by Subject – Life Sciences
More results in Biological Sciences and Psychology are also available. Check them out here.
QS WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS FOR MEDICINE
A closer look at the QS Subject Rankings for Chemical Engineering
By Danny Byrne
MIT tops the inaugural QS World University Rankings® for Chemical Engineering, with Cambridge, UC Berkeley, Oxford and Stanford joining it in the top five. California’s status as a research hub was underlined with four of the state’s universities in the top ten (Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA and Caltech), while Imperial College London joined Oxbridge to make three UK universities in the top ten.
While the universities of the sunshine state flex their collective muscle, it is MIT that underlines its reputation as the undisputed heavyweight champion in engineering, completing a clean sweep of all four engineering fields assessed in the QS World University Rankings® by Subject. The university’s chemical engineering faculty is legendary – more than 10% of chemical engineering teachers in the US earned their degree from MIT, and the faculty accounts for over 20% of the elected members of the US National Academy of Engineering.
UC Berkeley puts in an impressive third-place performance, with particular strength in academic reputation, for which it ranks second. The university’s chemical engineering faculty – recently renamed the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering – has been involved in important research in fields such as molecular thermodynamics, polymer processing, and catalysis and reaction engineering. North of the border, Toronto (14) and McGill (15) make the top 20, with a total of ten of Canada’s universities featuring in the top 200.
HE News Brief 12.4.11
by Abby Chau
IN THIS EDITION
- AUSTRALIA: Leadership at top institutions are targeting indigenous students’ leadership and participation rates
- SOUTH KOREA: Series of suicides on the KAIST campus has forced a change in student scholarship policies
- POLAND: Private and public institutions jostle for students and supremacy
- KENYA: Brain drain affecting professors and students
- GLOBAL: New QS Subject Rankings – Engineering & Technology has recently been released
QS Subject Rankings 2011 – Engineering & Technology
QS Subject Rankings are out, check out more results here.
Chemical Engineering Rankings 2011
| Rank | Institution | Country | Academic | Employer | Citations | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | United States | 100 | 84.9 | 82.2 | 90.1 |
| 2 | University of Cambridge | United Kingdom | 85.4 | 93.8 | 56.8 | 79.3 |
| 3 | University of California, Berkeley (UCB) | United States | 87.9 | 64.4 | 77.5 | 77.7 |
| 4 | University of Oxford | United Kingdom | 71.5 | 94.1 | 60.3 | 74.9 |
| 5 | Stanford University | United States | 73.3 | 73.9 | 75.1 | 74 |
| 6 | University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) | United States | 55.1 | 63.7 | 83.1 | 66.1 |
| 7 | California Institute of Technology (Caltech) | United States | 72.6 | 43.8 | 67.8 | 62.5 |
| 8 | Imperial College London | United Kingdom | 69.9 | 65.7 | 47.8 | 62 |
| 9 | Yale University | United States | 48.9 | 62 | 77.3 | 61.4 |
| 10 | National University of Singapore (NUS) | Singapore | 51.5 | 57.4 | 68.2 | 58.3 |
QS Subject Rankings 2011 – Engineering & Technology
More results in Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering are also available as well as full results in each Engineering subject. Check them out here.
QS SUBJECT RANKINGS – ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY
CIVIL & STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
