QS 2026 “World University Rankings” in Philosophy

The 2026 “QS World University Rankings” have been published. These contain rankings by subject matter, including philosophy. The rankings are conducted by the London-based education data firm Quacquarelli Symonds. As I noted in a post about an earlier version of these rankings: In the QS rankings, a school’s overall score for a particular subject is determined by a weighted formula that varies by area. In the arts and humanities, for the 2023 results, the formula used is: 60% academic reputation, 20% employer reputation, 7.5% citations per paper, 7.5% H-index, and 5% “International Research Metric“. (It is not clear why these factors are given these particular weights.) QS does not specify whether its rankings are intended to assist prospective undergraduate or graduate students. The rankings have come under fire at various points for methodological concerns as well as conflicts of interest. Some of the results in philosophy will strike many readers as odd. So be aware that these rankings are controversial (as, of course, is the very idea of fine-grained rankings of places to study philosophy), and take note of alternative sources of information, such as departmental websites, Academic Philosophy Data & Analysis and the Philosophical Gourmet Report (noting that various criticisms have also been made of the latter). With those caveats in mind, here are the top 50 schools in the 2026 QS Rankings in Philosophy: Rank University Name Employer Reputation H-Index Citations Citations Per Paper Academic Reputation 1 New York University (NYU) 75.7 90.5 96.8 100 2 Rutgers University–New Brunswick 57.2 77.5 85.7 97.7 3 University of Oxford 100 100 94.2 88.6 4 Australian National University (ANU) 82.8 85.5 93.2 91.4 5 University of Pittsburgh 40.3 78.3 84.7 96 6 University of Wollongong 63.7 79.1 97.4 90.4 7 University of Cambridge 98.1 88.6 88.6 86.1 8 The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) 97.1 87.1 95.6 85.2 9 Harvard University 98.4 83.7 87.1 84.2 10 University of Toronto 86.1 82.5 84.5 83.8 11 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 77.5 83.1 85.3 82.2 12 University of St Andrews 74.3 81.8 87.7 81.9 13 Princeton University 80.9 83.1 90.5 80.7 14 Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 85.2 79.1 86.8 81.3 14 King’s College London 88.8 83.7 87.5 80.3 16 The University of Sydney 76.7 84.9 87.7 80.3 17 Stanford University 95.8 81.2 88.1 79.2 18 Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) 70.5 81.8.. The post QS 2026 “World University Rankings” in Philosophy first appeared on Daily Nous.