The new QS World subject rankings for 2012 have been released yesterday 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).
For 2012 there are 29 new subject rankings on the QS website (3 new subjects in addition to last year; Pharmacy & Pharmacology, Communication & Media Studies and Education) – which provide the 2012 rankings for the top 200 universities in the world.
Each subject ranking is grouped under one of 5 faculty areas (Arts & Humanities, Engineering & Technology, Life Sciences & Medicine, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences & Management).
The methodology for QS World University Rankings by Subject includes only those indicators that bypass the direct involvement of institutions and can reliably be stratified by subject discipline. QS has 3 datasets that enable them to drill down by subject area: their ACADEMIC and EMPLOYER reputation surveys, and the Scopus data we they for the CITATIONS per Faculty indicator in the global rankings. These have been combined to produce the subject results. Some key points from the methodology notes are below:
In order to feature in any discipline table, an institution must meet 3 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 (Academic)
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 (Employer)
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 (Citations)
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.