QS World University Rankings by Subject 2012
A second round of global comparisons of universities and specialist institutions in more than 30 subjects will begin to be published in the next few weeks.
The new QS World University Rankings by Subject will be released in four tranches, beginning with the social sciences. They will feature improvements to the methodology introduced last year in the first ever international rankings of individual subjects, as well as an extension into new academic areas. Universities will continue to be ranked by academic reputation, employer reputation and research citations, with weightings tailored to each subject.
HE News Brief 1.8.11
by Abby Chau
- INTERNATIONAL: Webometrics has just launched its new results, plus a few tweaks in its methodology
- UK: Competition between institutions for the best-performing students is raising eyebrows
- BULGARIA: Institutions have won rights to set fees for Masters programmes and to audit foreign diplomas
- INTERNATIONAL: The rankings debate continues with Ellen Hazelkorn, Reaganomics, and the notion of world-class
- INTERNATIONAL: QS recently released its Subject Rankings in the Social Sciences Continue Reading
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. Continue Reading
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.
A closer look at the 2011 QS World University Rankings for English Language and Literature
by Mansoor Iqbal
At the pinnacle of the first ever QS World University Rankings® for English Language and Literature we find the towering titan of higher education that is Harvard, closely followed by the two halves of Oxbridge.
Harvard’s position at the top of the table is largely down to its strong reputation with academics, who may well have been motivated by respect for the plethora of eminent professors at the university’s English department. Faculty members include renowned post-colonialist Homi K. Bhabha, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Jorie Graham and founder of literary journal Representations and founding father of new historicism Stephen Greenblatt. Of course, reputation is nothing without world beating research to back it up, and Harvard does not disappoint in this regard. Between them, the faculty published 16 new works in 2010 (and two so far in 2011), including one play and one film.
Just below Harvard, we find Oxford outperforming its age-old rival in terms of both academic and employer reputation, further cementing its triumph across the humanities rankings, in which it finishes higher than Cambridge in all subjects apart from linguistics. This triumph can be ascribed to the Oxford’s status as a hotbed of literary research – at present, no less than 12 literary journals are edited or co-edited by the university’s faculty members. It also scores the highest employer rating, followed by Cambridge, showing that employers believe that Oxbridge continues to produce the graduates most suited to the rigours of professional life.
Californian public universities perform strongly, with UC Berkeley (4) and UCLA (9) cementing strong performances across the humanities, in which they consistently exceed their overall rank. The former thrives on its academic reputation, and can boast Pulitzer Prize winner and ex-American Poet Laureate Robert Hass amongst its faculty. UCLA’s position is the result of its strong employer reputation, which is only bettered by MIT, Harvard and Oxbridge. Continue Reading
QS World University Rankings by Subject: Philosophy
Click here to see more results in the Arts & Humanities.
| Rank | Title | Country | Academic | Employer | Citations | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Harvard University | United States | 99.6 | 96.3 | 50.3 | 94.3 |
| 2 | University of Oxford | United Kingdom | 100.0 | 95.4 | 41.0 | 93.6 |
| 3 | University of Cambridge | United Kingdom | 94.5 | 100.0 | 51.9 | 90.8 |
| 4 | University of California, Berkeley (UCB) | United States | 88.4 | 65.4 | 73.3 | 84.6 |
| 5 | Princeton University | United States | 80.1 | 39.7 | 81.6 | 76.2 |
| 6 | Australian National University | Australia | 73.8 | 52.8 | 95.1 | 73.8 |
| 7 | University of Toronto | Canada | 77.1 | 60.6 | 36.1 | 71.4 |
| 8 | Stanford University | United States | 74.8 | 46.0 | 56.7 | 70.1 |
| 9 | Yale University | United States | 73.2 | 64.4 | 22.1 | 67.2 |
| 10 | University of Chicago | United States | 71.1 | 50.4 | 13.8 | 63.3 |
| 11 | New York University (NYU) | United States | 64.7 | 50.9 | 60.0 | 62.9 |
| 12 | Columbia University | United States | 64.4 | 60.4 | 41.3 | 61.7 |
| 13 | University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) | United States | 60.6 | 59.9 | 61.0 | 60.6 |
| 14 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | United States | 53.4 | 78.4 | 90.8 | 59.6 |
| 15 | The University of Melbourne | Australia | 55.1 | 53.3 | 95.5 | 59.0 |
| 16 | University of British Columbia | Canada | 59.1 | 45.2 | 52.9 | 57.1 |
| 17 | University of Michigan | United States | 55.9 | 39.6 | 80.1 | 56.7 |
| 18 | McGill University | Canada | 57.3 | 53.9 | 26.5 | 53.9 |
| 19 | London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) | United Kingdom | 55.2 | 55.7 | 39.2 | 53.7 |
| 20 | The University of Sydney | Australia | 55.2 | 53.6 | 30.6 | 52.6 |
QS World University Rankings by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Click here to see more results in the Natural Sciences.
| Rank | Title | Country | Academic | Employer | Citations | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Harvard University | United States | 85.2 | 100.0 | 79.6 | 85.0 |
| 2 | University of California, Berkeley (UCB) | United States | 100.0 | 55.6 | 64.3 | 84.9 |
| 3 | University of Cambridge | United Kingdom | 95.8 | 90.6 | 46.9 | 80.6 |
| 4 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | United States | 94.5 | 73.7 | 53.8 | 80.2 |
| 5 | University of Oxford | United Kingdom | 88.5 | 76.6 | 55.0 | 77.3 |
| 6 | Stanford University | United States | 84.0 | 54.1 | 65.5 | 75.5 |
| 7 | California Institute of Technology (Caltech) | United States | 70.2 | 50.6 | 76.4 | 70.1 |
| 8 | Princeton University | United States | 65.4 | 40.4 | 75.1 | 65.8 |
| 9 | Imperial College London | United Kingdom | 67.8 | 63.2 | 46.1 | 60.8 |
| 10 | Australian National University | Australia | 61.6 | 55.4 | 59.6 | 60.4 |
| 11 | University of British Columbia | Canada | 67.8 | 45.7 | 44.7 | 58.7 |
| 12 | The University of Tokyo | Japan | 76.9 | 42.3 | 26.5 | 58.3 |
| 13 | ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) | Switzerland | 60.5 | 39.4 | 55.2 | 56.8 |
| 14= | National University of Singapore (NUS) | Singapore | 70.6 | 30.9 | 37.1 | 56.6 |
| 14= | University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) | United States | 61.1 | 51.6 | 49.2 | 56.6 |
| 16 | The University of Melbourne | Australia | 64.4 | 53.5 | 39.6 | 55.9 |
| 17 | Kyoto University | Japan | 70.5 | 49.7 | 25.8 | 55.0 |
| 18 | Yale University | United States | 53.7 | 55.7 | 54.8 | 54.2 |
| 19 | Cornell University | United States | 60.0 | 28.9 | 46.0 | 52.7 |
| 20 | University of Toronto | Canada | 54.0 | 37.2 | 54.9 | 52.6 |
QS World University Rankings 2011: Environmental Sciences
By Danny Byrne
The first QS subject ranking for Environmental Sciences comes at a time when climate change, sustainable energy and green alternatives are high on the international agenda. The results show that the university research and innovation that underpins environmental policy is global in its reach, with universities from 30 countries making up the top 200.
Harvard’s presence at the top of the table will be no surprise to those who follow international rankings, but the varied and important environmental research carried out at the university provides ample evidence that it has not merely been carried there by general reputation. The Harvard University Centre for the Environment hosts environmental research drawing in interdisciplinary fields from chemistry, earth sciences and engineering to humanities and social sciences. Recent innovations to emerge from the university include a joint project with IBM to utilize idle computers and create a new, cheaper form of solar power.
New 2011 QS World University Rankings by Subject – Natural Sciences
QS World University Rankings by Subject: Mathematics
We’ve just released our results for the Natural Sciences. For results in Physics, Chemistry, Metallurgy, Environmental Science, and Earth Sciences, click here.
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