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 This muddle suggests that at the very least, this report should be withdrawn in its current form and a corrected version should be issued.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.

The other central point made in the report is that world rankings use elitist criteria which embrace only a few per cent of the world’s 17,000 universities. As the EUA has only 850 members, it might be careful about using this argument. In any case, there would be problems in a ranking that went 17,000 entries deep. What real difference would there be between university 16,000 and university 17,000?

In fact, we have always been clear that these ranking systems are measuring a defined group of competitive World-Class Universities, not institutions with a local or regional reach. Anthony van Raan in Leiden has shown that most of the world’s internationally-cited research comes from this group of a few hundred universities. It is right to measure these institutions against each other on a global scale, providing that criteria are used that allow new entrants to gain admission. If you want to go deeper, there is always the Webometrics ranking, which runs all the way down to a nine-way tie for 11,996th position.

But the report is right to point out, as others have, that big annual world rankings are now being supplemented by more specialist endeavours, such as the QS World University Rankings® by Subject as well as our Asian University Rankings™.

However, these initiatives raise their own questions.  One is the reliance of some new learning-centred rankings on student satisfaction. Students in the Netherlands, say, are unlikely to want the same things from a university as students in China. It is problematic to rank the satisfaction felt by students who come from very different societies around the world. The QS rankings use employer opinion, which might be more informative given a sufficiently large and varied sample.

And in the final analysis, the EUA report misses the big point. University leaders, including those who attend EUA meetings, are paid good money to decide what their universities should look like. They might find rankings helpful in this task, but they cannot delegate their responsibility of shaping their institutions to rankings compilers or anyone else.

Check out the full results by clicking here.

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.

As in the majority of subjects, strong performances come from Oxford and Cambridge, which have demonstrated their strength across the subject range with consistent top ten rankings in the programs in which they are active. Among employers, Oxford was the most highly regarded university for Law, an achievement Cambridge equalled in Sociology. A clear Oxbridge and LSE hierarchy emerged in the UK, though top ten performances also came from Imperial College London (9th in Statistics, the only Social Sciences discipline in which it operates), and London Business School, which ranks 10th for Accounting and Finance.

In the US, as well as the big names such as Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley that have performed strongly across the board, institutions highlight specialist strengths in these areas. Columbia makes the top ten in Sociology, Politics and Law, in which it is joined in the top ten by neighbouring institution NYU, and University of Pennsylvania makes the top ten for Accounting and Finance. Other notable US performances come from UCLA and Chicago, while MIT makes the top five in three disciplines.

The US/UK stranglehold in the top spots is broken by some strong performances from Asia, Canada and Australia. National University of Singapore ranks 7th for Statistics, just ahead of the University of Toronto in 8th, while University of Melbourne ranks 9th for Law and Australia National University ranks 10th for Politics. University of Melbourne stakes a claim as Australia’s leading university in the Social Sciences, ranking first nationally in four tables to ANU’s two.

In continental Europe, the leading universities are ETH Zurich (Statistics, 13th), University of Amsterdam (Sociology, 33rd), University of Copenhagen (Politics, 34th), Universita di Bologna (Law, 32nd), and Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, which leads in both Economics (29=), and Accountancy and Finance (26th).

We’ve just published our findings in the Social Sciences & Management faculty. Have a look at the full list of subjects here.

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.

National University of Singapore (NUS) is the leading Asian university at 18th. NUS was rated 10th in the world among academics, and was the ninth most popular university among employers, confirming its reputation as a producer of world-class medical graduates. University of Tokyo (20), Kyoto University (38) and University of Hong Kong (HKU) (45) also made the top 50, with Tokyo rating as high as 8th in the world for academic reputation, the highest of any Asian university.

University of Toronto registered strong scores in all three criteria to rank 12th, just ahead of fellow Canadian institution McGill University in 13th. A total of 13 Canadian universities made the top 200, with University of British Columbia (31) and McMaster University (42=) making the top 50. Australia had one fewer university in the rankings, with 12 making the top 200, but five of them featured in the top 50: University of Melbourne (15), University of Sydney (29), University of Queensland (33=), Monash University (36=), Australian National University (46=).

QS WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS FOR MEDICINE

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.

Elsewhere, National University of Singapore (10) becomes the only Asian university to make the top ten. NUS leads an Asian contingent of six within the top 50, which also includes University of Tokyo (21) and Kyoto University (37) from Japan, Peking University (32) and Tsinghua University (42) from China, and IIT Roorkee (50) of India. Prospective students at graduate level in particular will note that though it ranks 21 overall, the University of Tokyo makes the top 10 for academic reputation, pointing to the high quality of its research standards.

Australia demonstrated its strength in chemical engineering with five universities in the top 50, a tally bettered only by the US. Melbourne leads the way at 12 (it was the fifth most popular university in the world among employers), followed by University of Queensland (29), University of New South Wales (30=), University of Sydney (44=) and Monash University (47). The rise of the nation’s younger technology-focused institutions is demonstrated by the presence of four Australia Technology Network (ATN) institutions in the top 200: Curtin University of Technology (51-100), Queensland University of Technology (101-150), RMIT (101-150) and University of South Australia (151-200).

In the UK, Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial are joined by Manchester (18) and Edinburgh (35=) in the top 50, with a further eight universities making the top 100 and a total of 23 in the top 200. Elsewhere in Europe ETH Zurich underlined its status as arguably the world’s leading university that does not primarily operate in English, ranking 11th overall and 9th for academic reputation. Other strong performances from around Europe came from Delft University of Technology (22) in the Netherlands, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (23) in Switzerland, and Technische Universität München (39) in Germany.

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

by Abby Chau

• A report produced by the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne says the number of indigenous students and academics  in higher education is too low. Australia’s indigenous community accounts for 2.4 percent of the population. Now the University of Sydney and University of Queensland have moved toward addressing this issue by appointing deputy and pro vice chancellors to target indigenous participation. As a matter of priority, Steven Larken, pro vice-chancellor at Charles Darwin University, says that increasing indigenous leadership and participation is now attached to performance measurement, which is of course linked to university financing.
  Full Story: New York Times
• A series of suicides on the KAIST campus has forced President Suh Nam-pyo to change a controversial policy which tied student performance to the amount of scholarship they are allotted. The policy, instituted by President Suh in 2006, is being blamed for intense competition, which some are saying, may have contributed to the tragedies that unfolded on the campus.
  Full Story:  JoongAng Daily
  More: Wall Street Journal
  
  
• Poland has the highest rate of student enrolment in private institutions in all of Europe. Before the collapse of communism, there was one private institution but now more than a third of Poland’s students attend private institutions. For years public and private institutions lived in relative harmony but as potential student rates are shrinking, competition between the two systems are set to increase. To buoy rivalry even further, private institutions are seeking subsidies from the state, and are trying to make tuition fees compulsory at public institutions. Some are saying competition is healthy for both private and public institutions as it will promote institutional diversity and excellence.
  Full Story:  Guardian
• According to this report, highly educated academics from Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda used to flood Kenyan universities, now the trend has reversed and Kenya is losing its star academics and pupils to these Africa countries. For example some estimate that at the St Augustine University in Tanzania, a quarter of its teaching staff are Kenyan. In addition, Kenyan students are also flocking to these countries – in some Ugandan universities, particularly in law courses, the majority of students are Kenyan. Salary and tuition fees share the burden of the blame but some are saying Kenya’s rigid higher education system is also part of the problem.
  Full Story:  Daily Nation

• The first ever QS Subject Rankings – Engineering & Technology has just been released. MIT topped the list in the Computer Science & Information Systems field, followed by Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. The subject rankings is based on several indicators including Academic and Employer Reputation, as well as citations per paper.
  Full Story:  The Australian
  

By Abby Chau

Chemical Engineering Rankings 2011

QS SUBJECT RANKINGS – ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY
CIVIL & STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING