New QS rankings by subject published last week

By Marielk. Last week, the third edition of QS rankings by subject were launched. Alltogether, 2,858 universities were evaluated to create top 200 lists in 30 subject areas and include indicators both related to the academic community, employer feedback as well as citations as a means to represent research intensity and quality, and different subject areas have different weighing in terms of the indicators due to the varied internal structure of the disciplines...
And, one should perhaps note how rankings are often criticized, but  - few institutions let go of the chance to boast when their faculty or field got into the top 10 or 20 or 50 in the world. So for better or for worse, it does not seem that one can look past the rankings. This is not to argue that one should not critically examine the basis for constituting such rankings and their often adverse implications on national or institutional policies. However, some bits of interesting information emerge: Asia appears to be highly ranked in the areas of engineering, the BRIC nations are not presenting a unified rise across the board, and a number of the Western larger systems arguably underperform despite their recent focus on excellence initiatives (Germany and France). Read more...