QS World University Rankings by Subject 2016

The sixth edition of the QS World University Rankings by Subject, released today on TopUniversities.com, features a record-breaking 42 disciplines, making it the largest-ever world subject rankings. New Zealand’s universities take 21 top-50 places in these tables, slightly improving on last year’s figure of 20.

The expert opinion of 76,798 academics and 44,426 employers informed the results, alongside the analysis of 28.5 million research papers and over 113 million citations sourced from the Scopus/Elsevier bibliometric database.

Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) continue to dominate, leading in 24 subjects between them. Each takes twelve leading positions. New Zealand’s highest finish is achieved by the University of Otago, which ranks 12th for Dentistry. It is followed by the University of Auckland, which ranks 20th in QS’s inaugural Archaeology rankings, and 23rd for Education. QS rank New Zealand’s universities in all of its 42 subject tables this year, making it one of only a few countries to achieve this feat.

The country’s universities have also seen improvements in the impact of their research this year. One of the four metrics used by QS to compile their rankings is citations per faculty, which measures the number of times papers produced by a department are cited by other universities. This year, the average citations per faculty score of the 145 New Zealand subject offerings ranked rises from 73.59 to 75.12.
 

QS World University Rankings by Subject: New Zealand’s universities represented
University	No. of placements	Best subject	Rank 2016
University of Auckland	38	Archaeology	20th
University of Otago	27	Dentistry	12th
University of Canterbury	25	Engineering - Civil & Structural	49=
Victoria University of Wellington	22	Social Policy & Administration	50=
Massey University	15	Veterinary Science	25th
University of Waikato	12	Education	51-100
Auckland University of Technology	5	Art & Design	51-100
Lincoln University	1	Agriculture & Forestry	51-100
© QS Quacquarelli Symonds 2004-2016 http://www.TopUniversities.com/

Ben Sowter, Head of the QS Intelligence Unit, said: “Though the US and UK remain dominant, our most inclusive rankings yet show that excellence can be found in an ever-increasing number of places. Nations like Austria, South Africa, Finland, Brazil, China, and Sweden can be found in the top ten of our tables. Our new top 100 for Performing Arts acknowledges academic excellence in 27 different countries, while our top 100 for Mineral Engineering recognises it in 26.”

In the six new disciplines ranked, Harvard University leads the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in Anthropology, while Cambridge leads Oxford and University College London (UCL) in Archaeology.  Juilliard tops the table for Performing Arts; it is followed by the University of Performing Arts Vienna. Colorado School of Mines tops Mineral Engineering while MIT takes the second spot. University of Pennsylvania leads Nursing, followed by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Toronto. Harvard, London School of Economics, and the University of Oxford take the top three spots for Social Policy and Administration. Nine of the thirty-six rankings published last year have new leaders.

New Zealand’s universities feature in all six of QS’s new rankings. Five feature in the top fifty of the new rankings - the University of Auckland ranks 49th for Anthropology, while also ranking 20th for Archaeology. It ranks 32nd for Nursing, and 49th for Social Policy & Administration - a subject in which the Victoria University of Wellington ranks joint 50th. New Zealand’s sole entry into the new Engineering - Mineral & Mining ranking is the University of Auckland again, which places in the 51-100 category.

QS Quacquarelli Symonds have been providing expert insight and analysis for both the higher education and business education since 1990. The QS World University Rankings are the world’s most popular based on Alexa data and other social media metrics. The annual World University Rankings by Subject provide employers, students, parents, and academics with the most comprehensive insight into global university performance at the subject level. They can be found in their entirety here.