本次QS共包含了42个专业排名，比去年新增了6个专业，分别为采矿工程、人类学、考古学、公共政策与行政管理、护理、表演艺术。

      本次42个专业的榜首分别被16所大学包揽。哈佛大学和麻省理工学院依然是本次排名的最大赢家。其中MIT几乎包揽了全部的工程类专业，而哈佛大学则在人文、社科、医学等领域表现出色。

　　剑桥大学和牛津大学紧随其后，各占领三项排名之首。皇家艺术学院和伦敦大学学院也各获得两项第一。尽管如此，美国大学的整体优势依然明显，占据了超过30个专业的排名榜首。

　　针对每个专业的不同特点，算法也有所不同。但整体上，本次排名主要参考的内容是学术与雇主方面的声誉调查以及相关领域的研究成果。具体算法请点击查看具体排名。

　　By John O’Leary

　　Sixteen different universities and specialist institutions top at least one of this year’s QS subject rankings, underlining the value of an exercise which highlights excellence where it counts for individual students – in the areas that they actually study.

　　Successive surveys have shown that subject rankings have become the greatest influence (after tuition fees) on those choosing to study abroad. While institutional rankings are generally better known, students have come to realise that comparisons by subject may be a better guide to their experience at university.

　　Universities, too, value the fine-grained information that the rankings provide. A report on the impact of rankings by the European Universities Association said: “Comparisons between universities on a subject basis can be much more useful for them than global university league tables that try to encapsulate entire institutions in a single score.”

　　The new rankings cover a record 42 subjects, six more than last year and including a number of subjects that are not ranked internationally elsewhere. Among the new subjects are mineral and mining engineering, anthropology and archaeology. The others are social policy and administration, nursing and the performing arts.

　　As in previous years, the methodology varies with the subject, reflecting differing priorities and the availability of data. In the performing arts, for example, citations do not represent the academic currency that they have become in the sciences. Instead, the views of academics account for 90 per cent of the scores in a ranking dominated by specialist institutions.

　　In nursing, by contrast, citations are plentiful: almost 250,000 papers were indexed for the new ranking. As a result, 30 per cent of the overall score is derived from citations and another 30 per cent on the h-index of faculty, measuring the impact of their research. Of the other new subjects, dentistry is equally research-heavy, whereas anthropology and archaeology are judged mainly on academic reputation.

　　The main components are reputational surveys among academics and employers, and the research record of the university in the subject being ranked. The rankings differ from QS’s institutional comparisons in their use of academics’ h-index as well as citations to measure research, whereas staffing levels and measures of international outlook are not used.

　　There has been one important change to the methodology behind the rankings, which will carry through to the QS World University rankings in September. In place of a single ‘affiliation cap’ which excludes papers with more than ten authors from the calculation of citations, a variable cap has been introduced to take account of differences between subjects. After consultation with the QS Global Advisory Board, it was agreed to set the cap at the nearest whole number of affiliations above 99.9 per cent of all papers in the subject. Overall, this reduces the number of excluded papers by almost 75 per cent, but in some subjects there are more exclusions than before.

　　The sixth edition of the QS World University Rankings by Subject has seen considerable movement since the last subject rankings were published. Agriculture, business and management, dentistry, development studies, English, history, mathematics, philosophy and statistics all have new leaders, while scores of universities have entered the rankings for the first time.

　　Not surprisingly, however, the top two universities in the QS World University Rankings – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard – remain dominant in many subjects. Each leads a dozen tables, with MIT almost recording a clean sweep of the engineering disciplines and Harvard supreme in the arts and social sciences, as well as in medical subjects.

　　Oxford and Cambridge are their nearest challengers, with three top finishes each. Two other UK institutions – the Royal College of Art and University College London’s Institute of Education – also top a table, but the rankings demonstrate the all-round strength of US higher education. American institutions lead in more than 30 subjects, and the country’s dominance is particularly obvious in areas such as engineering, which are expensive to provide. US universities take the top three places in three of the five engineering tables.

　　Only two Continental European universities feature among the leaders in any subject: Wageningen, the specialist Dutch university, in agriculture, and ETH Zurich in earth and marine sciences. Top places are even scarcer for Asia, with Hong Kong University’s leadership in dentistry the only example this year.

　　Latin America and, to a lesser extent Africa, have a number of creditable results – the University of Sao Paulo in the top ten for dentistry, for example, and the University of Cape Town in the top ten for development studies. But neither continent is represented in the top five in any subject. As in most international rankings, universities whose academics teach and publish in a language other than English struggle to compete at the top level.

　　Ben Sowter, who is responsible for the rankings as head of the QS Intelligence Unit, said: “The majority of prospective international students begin their search knowing what they want to study before considering where, so understanding the comparative quality of institution by subject is fundamental to the QS mission to support students in their decision making. We aim to add more depth, more detail and more subjects to this work year by year, and this is what we have done for 2016.”

　　Mr Sowter added that the strong showing by specialist institutions, many of which would not appear in overall rankings, was one of the benefits of drilling down to the subject level. In art and design, for example, six out of the top seven places are taken by specialist institutions, and the same is true in the performing arts.

　　In addition, comprehensive universities that do not appear at the top of the QS World University Rankings are able to demonstrate their strengths in particular areas. The University of Pittsburgh, for example, tops the philosophy table despite finishing outside the top 100 in the institutional ranking, while the University of Southern California remains top for communications, but is only three places higher than Pittsburgh overall.

　　Several of the new subjects are dominated by specialist institutions. The ranking for mineral engineering, for example, is headed by the Colorado School of Mines, founded more than 140 years ago and an independent state university educating almost 6,000 students.

　　In the performing arts, the leader is the Juilliard School, a world-famous private conservatoire for the performing arts, based in the Lincoln Center, in New York City. Focusing on drama, dance and music, it has almost 1,000 students taking a variety of courses, including four-year undergraduate degrees and Masters programmes. The Juilliard’s nearest challenger is another specialist institution, Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts. The Sibelius Academy, in Helsinki, is also in the top ten, alongside more familiar names from institutional rankings such as Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley.

　　Of the other new subjects, Harvard has the lead in anthropology and social policy, Cambridge in archaeology and the University of Pennsylvania in nursing.