2022 QS subject rankings

The 2022 QS World University Rankings by Subject, released April 6, show that the University of Victoria is recognized for world-class performance in a growing number of academic fields.

QS placed UVic among the world’s top 300 universities in 15 fields, up from 10 last year, with one field, geology, among the top 100. Those fields are:

• Earth and marine sciences
• Education
• English language and literature
• Environmental sciences
• Geography
• Geology
• Geophysics
• Hospitality & leisure management
• Linguistics
• Mathematics
• Philosophy
• Physics and astronomy
• Psychology 
• Sociology
• Sports-related subjects

All told, QS named UVic as one of the world’s top universities in 23 subjects. Of those, UVic held steady in 11 fields and advanced in nine from 2021.

The QS World University Rankings by Subject, like most other ranking systems, are influenced significantly by a university’s performance in reputation surveys. 

Along with reputation surveys, QS uses two quantitative measures to rank a university’s performance: citations per paper and H-index, a rolling measure of research productivity and citations that's used to estimate the quantity and quality of researchers’ work. In the 2022 QS subject rankings, Earth and marine sciences led UVic in citations, while environmental sciences were ahead in H-index performance.

Canadian universities continue to perform well as the sixth-most represented country in the QS rankings, with 31 institutions providing teaching and research in 626 programs that were recognized for world-leading excellence.