So finally, the 2015 QS subject rankings were published. It seems that the first attempt was postponed when the original methodology produced implausible fluctuations, probably resulting from the volatility that is inevitable when there are a small number of data points -- citations and survey responses -- outside the top 50 for certain subjects.
QS have done some tweaking, some of it aimed at smoothing out the fluctuations in the responses to their academic and employer surveys.
These rankings look at bit different from the World University Rankings. Cambridge has the most top ten placings (31), followed by Oxford and Stanford (29 each), Harvard (28), Berkeley (26) and MIT (16).
But in the world rankings MIT is in first place, Cambridge second, Imperial College London third, Harvard fourth and Oxford and University College London joint fifth.
The subject rankings use two indicators from the world, the academic survey and the employer survey but not internationalisation, student faculty ratio and citations per faculty. They add two indicators, citations per paper and h-index.
The result is that the London colleges do less well in the subject rankings since they do not benefit from their large numbers of international students and faculty. Caltech, Princeton and Yale also do relatively badly probably because the new rankings do not take account of their low faculty student faculty ratios.
The lesson of this is that if weighting is not everything, it is definitely very important.
Below is a list of universities ordered by the number of top five placings. There are signs of the Asian advance -- Peking, Hong Kong and the National University of Singapore -- but it is an East Asian advance.
Europe is there too but it is Cold Europe -- Switzerland, Netherlands and Sweden -- not the Mediterranean.
| Rank | University | Country | Number of Top Five Places |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Harvard | USA | 26 |
| 2 | Cambridge | UK | 20 |
| 3 | Oxford | UK | 18 |
| 4 | Stanford | USA | 17 |
| 5= | MIT | USA | 16 |
| 5= | UC Berkeley | USA | 16 |
| 7 | London School of Economics | UK | 7 |
| 8= | University College London | UK | 3 |
| 8= | ETH Zurich | Switzerland | 3 |
| 10= | New York University | USA | 2 |
| 10= | Yale | USA | 2 |
| 10= | Delft University of Technology | Netherlands | 2 |
| 10= | National University of Singapore | Singapore | 2 |
| 10= | UC Los Angeles | USA | 2 |
| 10= | UC Davis | USA | 2 |
| 10= | Cornell | USA | 2 |
| 10= | Wisconsin - Madison | USA | 2 |
| 10- | Michigan | USA | 2 |
| 10= | Imperial College London | UK | 2 |
| 20= | Wagenginen | Netherlands | 1 |
| 20= | University of Southern California | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Pratt Institute, New York | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Rhode Island School of Design | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Parsons: the New School for Design | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Royal College of Arts London | UK | 1 |
| 20= | Melbourne | Australia | 1 |
| 20= | Texas-Austin | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Sciences Po | France | 1 |
| 20= | Princeton | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Yale | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Chicago | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Manchester | UK | 1 |
| 20= | University of Pennsylvania | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Durham | UK | 1 |
| 20= | INSEAD | France | 1 |
| 20= | London Business School | UK | 1 |
| 20= | Northwestern | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Utrecht | Netherlands | 1 |
| 20= | Guelph | Canada | 1 |
| 20= | Royal Veterinary College London | UK | 1 |
| 20= | UC San Francisco | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Johns Hopkins | USA | 1 |
| 20= | KU Leuven | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Gothenburg | Sweden | 1 |
| 20= | Hong Kong | Hong Kong | 1 |
| 20= | Karolinska Institute | Sweden | 1 |
| 20= | Sussex | UK | 1 |
| 20= | Carnegie Mellon University | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Rutgers | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Pittsburgh | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Peking | China | 1 |
| 20= | Purdue | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Georgia Institute ofTechnology | USA | 1 |
| 20= | Edinburgh | UK | 1 |
