Academics and Employers Name the World's Top Universities in 36 Disciplines

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Apr 28, 2015, 05:00 ET

LONDON, April 28, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

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QS World University Rankings by subject Logo (PRNewsFoto/QS Quacquarelli Symonds)

The 2015 QS World University Rankings by Subject released today on TopUniversities.com, features a record-breaking 36 disciplines making it the largest ever ranking of its kind.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150317/735123 )

The expert opinion of 85,062 academics and 41,910 employers informed the results, alongside the analysis of 17.3 million research papers and over 100 million citations (Scopus/Elsevier bibliometric database).

Harvard and MIT continue to take the lion's share of top places, leading in 21 subjects between them. However, UK universities have improved their positions overall, with six separate institutions leading in at least one subject.

In the six NEW disciplines ranked, London Business School leads Harvard and INSEAD in Business and Management, while MIT leads The Bartlett School (UCL) and TU Delft in Architecture.

The Royal College of Art tops the table for Art & Design followed by Parsons School for Design. Sweden's Karolinska Institute tops Dentistry while Hong Kong University takes the second spot.

University of Sussex dominates Development Studies followed by Harvard and Manchester University. UC Davis, Cornell and The Royal Veterinary College take the top three spots for Veterinary Science.

Ben Sowter, QS head of research says: "The ranking shows that academic excellence is widely distributed around the globe. The 894 universities ranked are based in 60 different countries.
The 200 universities listed for business, for example, are in 32 nations, and the 400 ranked for medicine in 47."

Cambridge ranks among the top-ten in 31 disciplines followed by Oxford and Stanford in 29 apiece. Harvard makes the top-ten in 28 subjects, UC Berkeley in 26 and MIT in 19 and London School of Economics (LSE) 11.

They are followed by Princeton and UCLA (10), Yale (9), Imperial College (8), UCL (6), Caltech and Columbia University (5).

Outside UK and US, here are the universities achieving the most numerous placements within the top-ten.

   
                                     Placements in Top 10

    National University Singapore             11           Singapore
    ETH Zurich                                10          Switzerland
    University of Tokyo                       6              Japan
    Australian National University            4            Australia
    University of Hong Kong                   4            Hong Kong
    Nanyang Technological University          3            Singapore
    Karolinska Institute                      3             Sweden
    Melbourne University                      2            Australia
    Tsinghua University                       2              China
    TU Delft                                  2           Netherlands
    Wageningen University                     2           Netherlands

The chart below illustrates the proportion of universities featuring among the Top 50 across the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2015.

   
    USA               36.6%
    Asia              17.0%
    Europe excl. UK   15.5%
    UK                14.0%
    Australia          8.5%
    Canada             5.3%
    Latin America      1.7%
    New Zealand        1.1%
    Africa             0.3%

SOURCE QS Quacquarelli Symonds