Editor’s note: This story is featured in the 2022 year in review.
Six Arizona State University programs including business, management and public administration were ranked top 25 in the world by ShanghaiRanking’s 2022 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects.
Published annually by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, an independent organization dedicated to research on higher education intelligence, programs are ranked in 54 subjects across five disciplines including natural sciences, engineering, life sciences, medical sciences and social sciences.
The top three ASU programs in the 2022 rankings are in the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions (public administration at sixth in the world and No. 2 in the U.S.) and the W. P. Carey School of Business (management and business administration, ninth and 12th in the world, respectively, and Nos. 5 and 9 in the U.S.).
Cynthia Lietz, dean of Watts College and President’s Professor of Social Work, said she is especially proud of the global recognition.
“Our faculty in the School of Public Affairs are internationally recognized for their work in science and technology, local government, organizational design, sustainability, emergency management and many important areas impacting the health of our communities. I am so pleased to see that their talent and efforts are being recognized in this important ranking.”
MORE: School of Public Affairs research performance helps secure ranking
Among the U.S. rankings, also notable are geography coming in fourth in the nation and transportation science and technology ranking seventh.
ASU programs ranked top 25 in the world:
- Public administration: 6 (2 in U.S., ahead of Harvard, Columbia and Yale universities).
- Management: 9 (5 in U.S., ahead of Stanford, the University of Southern California and New York University).
- Business administration: 12 (9 in U.S., ahead of Stanford, the University of Southern California and UCLA).
- Environmental science and engineering: 15 (8 in U.S., ahead of the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Maryland, College Park; and the California Institute of Technology).
- Education: 21 (17 in U.S., ahead of Columbia University Teachers College, Johns Hopkins University and UCLA).
- Economics: 23 (17 in U.S., ahead of the University of Wisconsin, the California Institute of Technology and Cornell University).
"The ShanghaiRankings are an important barometer for universities all over the world," said Ohad Kadan, the new dean of the W. P. Carey School of Business. "Anytime you can be recognized among the very best, it is worth celebrating. But for all of us at W. P. Carey, it's a reminder that we must work that much harder in the future to remain among the best, whether it is in rankings like these or in improving outcomes for our graduates or building new opportunities to help our corporate partners stay competitive in a rapidly evolving economy."
Additional ASU programs ranked in the top 50 in the world:
- Finance: 26 (22 in the U.S., ahead of Yale University, Dartmouth College and UCLA).
- Library and information science: 26 (17 in the U.S., ahead of MIT). (Note: Although ASU does not have a degree program in library and information science, it ranked high in this category based on the number of articles published by researchers who have an ASU affiliation on topics related to those disciplines.)
- Geography: 31 (4 in the U.S., ahead of Princeton, Harvard and MIT).
- Transportation science and technology: 31 (7 in the U.S., ahead of Stanford, Carnegie Mellon University and Purdue University-West Lafayette).
- Psychology: 40 (28 in the U.S., ahead of Princeton, the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins University).
- Law: 49 (42 in the U.S., ahead of Emory University, Indiana University Bloomington and the University of California, Davis).
ShanghaiRanking used five criteria to rank more than 5,000 universities across the globe, including the number of papers published in top journals and the number of faculty awards in the specific subjects.
The Center for World-Class Universities and the Graduate School of Education (formerly the Institute of Higher Education) of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China first published the ShanghaiRanking's in June 2003. Rankings are updated annually and since 2009 have been published and copyrighted by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy.
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