UK & World Course Subject Rankings

Whilst university rankings tables are useful, they can often be a little misleading. Just because a university has a very good reputation overall, does not mean that it excels in every different subject it offers. This is especially true for more unusual or speciality courses. Universities and colleges that specialise in one particular subject area or only offer postgraduate study will often not even appear on university rankings tables, and yet appear very high up in subject tables.

Therefore, subject tables can often be a more useful gauge of the reputation of specific courses at different universities and colleges. A number of higher education bodies offer their own course ranking tables for a whole range of subjects. You can find links to both UK and world rankings below.

The Guardian 2013 UK University Subject Tables

Alongside their overall UK university rankings, The Guardian UK newspaper also publishes annual subject tables, comparing almost 50 different course subjects. The universities that offer courses at undergraduate level in each specific subject are ranked for their quality in the field.

See the full list of Guardian subject rankings for 2013 here -->

To show an example of how different certain subject tables look to the regular university rankings, below is The Guardian's 2013 rankings for Education courses.

Guardian 2013 UK Undergraduate Education Course Rankings:

Rank	University	Rank	University	Rank	University
1	University of Cambridge	8	University of Stirling	15	Uni of Wales, Newport
2	University of Huddersfield	9	University of Aberdeen	=16	University of Birmingham
3	University of Reading	10	Plymouth University	=16	University of Sunderland
4	St. Mary's Uni. College	11	University of Leeds	18	University of Hertfordshire
5	Kingston University	12	University of Glasgow	19	University of Dundee
6	Northumbria University	13	Durham University	20	University of Warwick
7	Uni of the West of Scotland	14	University of Derby

QS 2012 World University Subject Tables

In a similar way to The Guardian for the UK, QS publish annual world university rankings. And just like The Guardian, they also publish subject rankings on a global scale. They compare hundreds of universities against each other in dozens of different subjects.

See the full list of QS global subject rankings for 2012 here -->

As before, we have included the example of Education subject courses below to give you an idea of the QS global rankings for 2012.

QS 2012 World Education Course Rankings:

Rank	University	Country	Rank	University	Country
1	Harvard University	USA	11	University of Sydney	AUS
=2	Stanford University	USA	12	University of Tokyo	Japan
=2	University of Cambridge	UK	13	University of Toronto	Canada
4	Berkeley	USA	14	University of Wisconsin	USA
5	University of California (LA)	USA	15	University of Chicago	USA
6	University of Oxford	UK	16	Monash University	AUS
7	Columbia University	USA	17	Institute of Education	UK
8	University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong	18	King's College London	UK
9	University of Michigan	USA	19	University of Illinois	USA
10	University of Melbourne	AUS	20	NTU	Singapore