QS have just announced the latest edition of their world university rankings by subject. The methodology is significantly different from the world rankings, consisting of five indicators: Academic Review, Employer Review, H-Index, Citations per Paper, and International Research Network. It therefore places a greater emphasis on research. The weighting assigned to these indicators varies from one subject to another.
There are five broad subjects: Arts and Humanities, Engineering and Technology, Life Sciences and Medicine, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences and Management, in addition to over fifty narrow subjects.
The top of these rankings continues to be dominated by British and American universities. Harvard is in first place for all of the broad subjects except for Engineering and Technology, where Massachusetts Institute of Technology is in the lead. Oxford is second in all except for Natural Sciences where it is in third place.
The general trend is for Britain and North American institutions to remain dominant but for elite Asian universities such as Tsinghua, Zhejiang, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and the University of Hong Kong, continue to make gains.
In marked contrast, scores of universities in Western Europe have fallen in the rankings for Engineering and Technology, Life Sciences and Medicine, and the Natural Sciences.
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