Tuesday, March 22, 2016

World's first-ever Performing Arts university rankings

ARTS EDUCATION

LA Opus, Los Angeles
RODNEY PUNT

LA Opus shares a press release received today from the QS Press Office. Lovers of the performing arts can celebrate new attention given to the field's university level training. While the rankings have the USA's Juilliard ranked number one, also notable is that half of the top ten universities are in the UK. LA Opus cautions that comparisons in this survey seemingly compare apples and oranges, with music, theater, and dance lumped together in the general category of "performing arts." It also appears from the schools listed below that music is the survey's dominant field. A more inclusive worldwide spread among the top twenty honorees follows in the narrative below.

QS Press Office
World University Rankings
London, March 22, 2016

The Juilliard School has been ranked as the world’s best university for the study of Performing Arts, in what is the first ever rankings for this subject. The ranking was reported in the sixth edition of the QS World University Rankings by Subject, released today on TopUniversities.com, which features a record-breaking 42 disciplines, making it the largest-ever ranking of its kind.

The expert opinion of 76,798 academics and 44,426 employers informed the results, alongside the analysis of 28.5 million research papers and over 113 million citations sourced from the Scopus/Elsevier bibliometric database. This led to QS considering for inclusion 1,008 institutions offering Performing Arts-related courses, nominally ranking 974, before finally publishing the top 100.

In second place for Performing Arts is University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, from Austria. Completing the top three is the Royal College of Music from the United Kingdom.

This year’s first ever ranking features the world’s top 100 places to study Performing Arts, ranking those institutions that offer courses with a practical focus in at least one of Music, Drama, and Dance. The most-featured country in the ranking is the United States which takes 6 top-20 places, and 26 places overall. It is followed by the United Kingdom, which is home to 24 of the world’s top 100 places to study the subject. The University of Oxford and the Royal Academy of Music are also in the top five.

However, though the United Kingdom and the United States dominate, QS recognise that institutions from nations across the globe are providing a world-class education for aspirant thespians, dancers, and musicians alike. The rankings feature institutions from 27 different nations, with Finland’s Sibelius Academy finishing 7th. Also in the top-20 are representatives from Sweden (Royal College of Music in Stockholm, 11th), France (Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, 12th), and Switzerland (Conservatoire de Musique de Geneve, 19th).

Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) continue to take the lion’s share of top places in the overall rankings, leading in 24 subjects between them. Each takes twelve leading positions.

QS World University Rankings by Subject for 2016: Top 10 (Performing Arts Institution, Country)

1   Juilliard School, United States
2   University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria
3= Royal College of Music, United Kingdom
3= University of Oxford, United Kingdom
5   Royal Academy of Music, United Kingdom
6   Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (Formerly Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama), UK
7   Sibelius Academy, Finland
8   University of California, Berkeley (UCB), United States
9   Guildhall School of Music and Drama, United Kingdom
10 Indiana University Bloomington, United States

© QS Quacquarelli Symonds 2004-2016 http://www.TopUniversities.com/

Ben Sowter, Head of the QS Intelligence Unit, said: “Though the US and UK remain dominant, our most inclusive rankings ever show that excellence can be found in an ever-increasing number of places. Nations like Austria, South Africa, Finland, Brazil, China, and Sweden can be found in the top ten of our tables. Our new top 100 for Performing Arts acknowledges academic excellence in 27 different countries, with institutions from 8 different countries in the top 20.”

QS Quacquarelli Symonds have been providing expert insight and analysis for both the higher education and the business sector since 1990. Their QS World University Rankings are the world’s most popular based on Alexa data and other social media metrics. Their annual World University Rankings by Subject provide employers, students, parents, and academics with the most comprehensive insight into global university performance at the subject level. They can be found in their entirety here.

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