Six Iranian universities are present in Quacquarelli Symonds 2018 subject rankings.
The University of Tehran is also present in two new fields for the first time.
The QS World University Rankings by Subject surveys the world’s top universities in individual subject areas, covering 48 subjects and five broad subject areas as of 2018. The latest ranking was published on QS website on Feb. 28.
The subject rankings show Iranian universities have performed consistently compared to the last year.
Iranian universities ranked in two out of the five broad subjects, namely engineering and life sciences.
As for the 48 subject areas, Iran was previously present in seven, namely medicine, architecture, agriculture and forestry, electric and electronic engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry and pharmacology.
Six Top Universities
The six universities of Iran on the subject ranking list were University of Tehran and Sharif University of Technology, as well as the medical universities of Tehran, Shiraz, Mashhad and Tabriz.
University of Tehran: This year UT is present in two new subject areas, geography and material science. UT is currently ranked in the group of 151-200 in geography and in the group of 251-300 in material science.
UT had consistent rankings compared to last year in medicine, architecture, electronic and mechanical engineering, and dropped 50 spots in agriculture and forestry.
Sharif University of Technology: The university has had consistent ratings in three of the four subjects (mechanical engineering, chemistry and engineering and technology) it was ranked in. It, however, dropped 50 places in electronic engineering compared to 2017 to be placed in the group of 351-400 in this subject.
Tehran University of Medical Sciences: The capital’s medical university is ranked the same as 2017 in medicine and life sciences, and improved in pharmacy and pharmacology to join the 151-200 category.
Shiraz University of Medical Sciences: Being one of the leading medical universities in Iran, Shiraz Medical University is rated same as before in medicine, falling in ranking category of 401-450.
Mashhad University of Medical Sciences:The medical university of the shrine city of Mashhad is ranked poorly compared to the previous year. It fell 50 spots in both medicine and pharmacy.
Tabriz University of Medical Science: The university fell 50 places to join the 451-500 category in the subject of medicine.
Mohammad Javad Dehqani, the head of Islamic World Science Citation Center, pointed that Iran is doing well in subject rankings.
“In 2016, Tehran University of Medical Science was the only university present in the subject of medicine,” he said.
Shiraz, Mashhad and Tabriz medical universities have been included in QS rankings in the past two years.
QS’s World University Rankings were released in December 2017. The report listed the top 959 universities of the world.
Amirkabir University of Tehran has remained in the 501-550 group in 2018. However, it was absent from the current subject ranking. In 2017, it was ranked 351-400 in subject ranking.
UT has maintained its status in the past two years, but dropped 50 positions in 2018 to the group of 601-650. Sharif fell 40 spots to be placed in the 471-480 category. Iran University of Science and Technology tumbled100 places to join the group of 551-600.
Shahid Beheshti University fell 100 spots to be placed in the 801-1,000 group. Shahid Beheshti was also in the subject ranking in 2017, but is no longer listed on the 2018 table.
In the list of the top 10 international universities, five are located in the United States, four in the United Kingdom and one in Germany.
How it Works
The annual QS World University Rankings by Subject compares academic reputation, employer reputation, research citations and impact. Each of the subject rankings is compiled using four sources.
According to the ranking system’s guidelines, the first two of these are QS’s global surveys of academics and employers, which are used to assess the international reputation of institutions in each subject.
The second two indicators assess research impact, based on research citations per paper and h-index in the relevant subject.
The h-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications of a scientist or scholar.
These four components are combined to produce the results for each of the subject rankings, with weightings adapted for each discipline.
