This year Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) published its latest rankings of universities in the world by subject. Are there significant trends in higher education institutions depending of their different disciplines? Let's find out.

We´re constantly checking and analyzing benchmarks and studies to assess the quality and performance of the best universities of the world. 

Quacquarelli Symonds's new ranking of universities in the world, by subject, is very relevant to assess particular institutions that focus their effort on specific areas of knowledge, an issue that is often overlooked in general rankings of college reputation.

Purpose of the Ranking

According to Ateek Khan, Senior Analyst at the QS Intelligence Unit, for academics, “subject rankings represent a medium by which their work at an institution is able to be assessed on its own merit. QS is extremely proud at the level of granularity these rankings are able to offer, and no effort is spared to ensure their reliability.”

On the other hand, John O’Leary, Editor at QS, explains that “the focus on subjects is valued by students for identifying specialist institutions and universities that may not yet compete at the highest levels across the board, as well as the more familiar names.”

Jack Moran, Education Reporter at QS, adds that “our rankings can act as a differentiator. By focusing on important aspects about a top university – for example, how employable might a particular university make you? How good is a particular institution at research?"

Methodology 

According to QS, the ranking aims to help prospective students identify the world’s leading schools in their chosen field.

The rankings are compiled evaluating QS' surveys of academics and employers, and measuring research impact from the Scopus database. This is weighed in terms of:

1. Academic reputation per areas of expertise.

2. Employer reputation per potential recruitment institutions and disciplines.

3. Research citations per paper, controlled by subject-specific volume of research.

4. H-index of productivity and impact of publications and citations of a scientist or scholar.

These indicators are weighted depending on an academic discipline. For instance, medicine tends to publish in larger volumes than history. 

How are universities ranked, by subject?

Arts and humanities: the US and the UK take the lead

Some of the world’s largest and comprehensive universities top the rankings in this subject matter. In the top 10 universities, 7 were from the US, 2 from the UK and one from Australia. Source: QS World University Rankings

Engineering and Technology: Asia comes to the picture

As it would be expected, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tops the rankings, followed by Stanford. However, one important referent in Asia is Singapore, which has risen in terms of the quality of its secondary and higher education, especially in technology. China is also working hard in the field, as Tsinghua University reaches number 10. Source: QS World University Rankings

 Life Sciences and Medicine: a mixed outlook

Again, the top universities come from the US and the UK. However, the best institutions in the field are both comprehensive universities like Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford, as well as more subject-specific institutions, such as Johns Hopkins, MIT and Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. Source: QS World University Rankings

Natural Sciences: value around the world

The quality of the best universities in the field is highly spread out around the globe. Out of the top 25 institutions, there are representatives from Japan, South Korea, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Germany, Singapore, and Switzerland.Source: QS World University Rankings 

 Social Sciences and Management: Australia comes of age

Even though Australian universities are not amongst the top 10, the country has 9 universities among the 100 top social sciences and management institutions in the world. While it still has a long way to go against academic superpowers like the US and the UK, Australia is becoming a growing and appealing country for those who wish to get a degree and research areas such as business, communications and social policy.
Source: QS World University Rankings

The final outcome: does this ranking do justice?

We realize that these comparisons may not give credit to many world-class institutions who have achieved great scores on these rankings and who’ve made significant efforts to position themselves of referents in different subject matters.

QS’ Jack Moran says that these rankings should be treated like “dietary supplements,” and are part of a larger process of deliberation about the best university. The study is, rather:

“(…) a resource that will improve the health of anybody’s decision-making when used both properly, and alongside the other essential components of your informational diet: open days, peer review, university-specific research and university fairs (…)”.

What do you think about these subject-specific rankings? Do they credit the work of your institution?