2020 QS Philosophy Rankings
The 2020 “QS World University Rankings” have been published, including rankings of philosophy programs.
The rankings are conducted by the London-based education firm Quacquarelli Symonds. They take into account academic reputation, employability of graduates, research citations per faculty paper, and h-index. The overall ranking is determined by a weighted formula that varies by discipline. In philosophy, the formula used is: 75% academic reputation, 5% employer reputation, 10% citations per paper, and 10% h-index.
The inputs are partly determined through surveying faculty and institutions. According to QS, there were 2,280 faculty responses and 871 institutional responses in philosophy. It is unclear whether, for the purpose of determining these numbers, “response” counts questions answered or surveys completed, and it is not known how many questions are on the surveys.
You can read more about the methodology here and here.
The rankings do not specify whether they are intended to assist prospective undergraduate or graduate students.
Several criticisms of the rankings, along with responses from QS, are discussed here and here. These rankings are far from uncontroversial, as, of course, is the very idea of fine-grained rankings of places to study philosophy.
Here are the top 40 places in the world to study philosophy, according to QS.
In total, 200 institutions are ranked. You can view the whole list here.
I’d be interested in a list of cities for talking about philosophy with people who take a serious interest in it. I’ve considered moving to a variety of places and this is something fairly high in importance to me.
Before I moved to St Andrews someone told me that it had the most philosophy per capita of anywhere in the world. Probably a stretch to call it a ‘city’, though…
Wittgenstein once called academic philosophy “shit”. You can see why.
This is interesting, but where is Africa in all of these? Is the ranking about Western Philosophy?