The new QS World subject rankings for 2012 have been released (http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2012/subject-rankings/) and Kent appears in 5 of the top 200 subject listings:
- Philosophy – ranked in the 151-200 group (in 2011 Kent appeared only in this subject, in the same 151 – 200 group)
- Psychology (151-200)
- Law (101-150)
- Politics & International Studies (151-200
- Sociology (101-150)
In order to feature in any discipline table, an institution must meet three prerequisites:
- Attract more than 20 responses from academics/ employers
- Exceed the five-year threshold for number of papers published in the given discipline
- Offer undergraduate or taught postgraduate programs in the given discipline
Academic Reputation
The threshold for academic respondents that any discipline must reach for us to publish results in that discipline has been set at 150. As responses build over time, new subjects from the above list may qualify.
Employer Reputation
Employers are asked to identify up to 10 domestic and 30 international institutions they consider excellent for the recruitment of graduates. They are also asked to identify from which disciplines they prefer to recruit. From examining where these two questions intersect we can infer a measure of excellence in the given discipline. The threshold for including the Employer component for any discipline is 300.
Citations per Paper
In the overall QS World University Rankings® a measure of Citations per Faculty is used. This has some advantages taking into account the size of an institution yet allows QS to penetrate deeply into the global research landscape. At a discipline level it is impractical to reliably gather faculty numbers broken down by discipline so we need to revert to a Citations per Paper model – this requires a minimum publication threshold per discipline to be set dynamically to avoid anomalies in the results.