Cranfield University has been ranked amongst the world’s top universities in the latest QS World University Rankings by Subject.

In the subject area ‘Engineering – Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing’ Cranfield has been ranked 27th in the world, climbing 18 places from last year’s ranking and attaining top scores in Employer and Academic Reputation.

‘Business and Management Studies’ has risen to 110th in the rankings with Cranfield's highest H-index score, and ‘Environmental Sciences’ is now in the top 200, achieving Cranfield’s highest score for Citations per Paper.

The University also improved its rankings in ‘Agriculture and Forestry’ and in ‘Materials Science’.

Across the nine academic disciplines of the 2022 rankings that Cranfield features in, six subjects improved their positions, one stayed the same and two were not scored last year.

In the broad subject area of Engineering and Technology, Cranfield scored highly in the new International Research Network (IRN) metric. This is a measure of efficiency for establishing stable research collaborations and highlights Cranfield’s ability to work with international partners to add value to the global bank of research.

Professor Karen Holford CBE FREng, Chief Executive and Vice-Chancellor of Cranfield University, said: “Our success in these rankings is a reflection of the globally renowned research and teaching that takes place at Cranfield. We are committed to giving our students an excellent educational experience which accelerates their careers, and helps them tackle some of the big challenges of our time.”

The QS World University Rankings put Cranfield in the world’s top universities for the following subjects:

  • Engineering – Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing
  • Petroleum Engineering
  • Agriculture and Forestry
  • Environmental Sciences
  • Materials Science
  • Social Sciences and Management
  • Accounting and Finance
  • Business and Management Studies
  • Economics and Econometrics

The latest ranking success adds to a long list of achievements for Cranfield University which has been awarded the prestigious Queen's Anniversary Prize six times.

The 2022 instalment of QS’s global university performance comparison offers independent data on the performance of 1,543 universities across 51 academic disciplines. The full data can be found on the QS website.

As a specialist postgraduate university and global leader for education and transformational research in technology and management, Cranfield does not rank in every subject area.