QS Quacquarelli Symonds recently announced the publication of the latest edition of their subject rankings. There are now 55 narrow and 5 broad subject rankings.
The methodology of these rankings is rather different from the QS world university rankings. There are only five indicators: Academic Reputation, Employer Reputation, Citations per Paper, H-Index, and International Research Network. They do not include Faculty Student Ratio, International Students, International Faculty, Citations per Faculty or Sustainability.
Consequently, the subject rankings measure reputation and citations rather than current research output, teaching quality, or resources.
The weighting of the indicators for the broad subjects varies. For example, Employer Reputation ranges from 10% for Life Sciences and Medicine to 30% for Engineering and Technology and Social Sciences and Management, and that for Citations per Paper ranges from 7.5% for the Arts and Humanities to 20% for Life Sciences and Medicine.
The result is that western universities, especially Harvard, MIT and Oxford continue to dominate the rankings while Swiss, Singaporean and Dutch universities also perform well. Mainland China continues to improve although, according to QS, it still lags behind the USA and the UK for many subjects.
The top universities in the broad subject groups are:
- Arts and Humanities; University of Oxford
- Engineering and Technology; Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Life Sciences and Medicine; Harvard University
- Natural Sciences; Harvard University
- Social Sciences and Management; Harvard University.
Source:
TopUniversities