OREANDA-NEWS. March 24, 2016. The University of Tartu is the only university in the Baltic states which is represented in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2016 with six subjects. Of the six UT subjects on the list, linguistics (101–150) and computer science and information systems (401–450) are new entries in high places.

For the fourth year, communication and media are in highest place (101–150) in the subject ranking by international consultancy company Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). English language and literature (251–300), modern languages (251–300) and medicine (251–300) have maintained their positions.

Head of Institute of Computer Science Professor Jaak Vilo said: “We are very pleased to get noticed on a global scale—the effort that the Estonian state has put in IT education and research in the last years starts to bear fruit in otherwise slow statistics. The critical mass of high quality research and education at the universities is a key to the future growth opportunities for the Estonian ICT sector. We are already planning the next significant step in this direction, together with Tallinn University of Technology and Edinburgh University, establishing a joint ITEE Centre of Excellence in Digital Connected Economy under the H2020 Teaming call. This will also help bring the fruits of research into broader benefit of society and economy in general.”

Since 2011 QS, which compiles the QS World University Rankings, has been ranking universities by individual subjects. The aim of QS World University Rankings by Subject is to provide the public with comparable information about the strengths of universities on the level on individual subjects.

The 2016 ranking analysed data of 4226 universities, there were 945 universities which made the list with at least one subject. This year QS ranked universities by 42 subjects.

QS compiles the ranking on the basis of the university’s reputation among the researchers and employers of the respective specialisation and bibliometric indexes (the source is the bibliographic database Scopus by publishing house Elsevier).

The University of Tartu is the only Baltic university among the 200 best European universities, in the range 181–190 (Times Higher Education (THE) 2016). In 2015, the University of Tartu was on the position 351–400 in THE’s top 400 universities ranking list. In QS World University Rankings (2015), the University of Tartu is number 400.