QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022

QS Quacquarelli Symonds - the international higher education think-tank - released the twelfth edition of the QS World University Rankings by Subject: an independent comparative analysis of the performance of 15,200 individual university programs taken by students at 1543 universities in 88 locations across the world, across 51 academic disciplines.

They are part of the annual QS World University Rankings portfolio, which was consulted over 147 million times in 2021 on TopUniversities.com and covered 96,000 times by media and institutions. 

Global Highlights 

• US institutions lead in 28 of the 51 subjects ranked. Harvard University and MIT remain the strongest-performing institutions, ranking number one in twelve subjects.
• Fifteen subject tables are topped by a British university, with the University of Oxford leading in six.
• ETH Zurich is continental Europe's top university, achieving number-one spots in three subjects. Moreover, based on its share of top-10 ranks, Switzerland is the world's third-best higher education sector.  
• Australia is the fourth most represented country for the number of entries
• China (Mainland) ranks fifth globally for the number of programs (100), achieving a top-50 rank. 
• No university has a larger number of top-50 than Canada's University of Toronto (46). 
• The National University of Singapore - Asia's best-performing university - is the world's best for Petroleum Engineering. NUS ranks among the top-10 in sixteen disciplines.
• Japanese higher education is still in relative decline after decades of underfunding for research and PhD students.
• Universidad de Chile achieves Latin America's highest rank, 8th globally in Engineering - Mineral & Mining, followed by UNAM (Mexico) 13th in Modern Languages and Universidade de São Paulo (USP) 15th in Dentistry.
• The University of Cape Town remains Africa's most competitive institution, placing 9th globally in Development Studies.
• King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, 6th globally for Petroleum Engineering, achieves the Arab region's highest rank.

Ben Sowter, QS Research Director, said: "Observing performance trends across over 15,000 university departments enables us to see which factors influence success. First, an international outlook - both in terms of faculty body and research relationships - correlates strongly with improved performance. Second, rising universities received targeted investment from governments for over a decade. Third, strengthening relationships with industry correlates with better employment, research, and innovation outcomes."