New Ranking of the World’s Top Art Schools

Discover the top arts and design schools based on the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2020.

The 2015 edition of the QS World University Rankings by Subject, released earlier this week, features a brand new ranking of the world’s top universities for art and design. This ranking of the world’s top art schools is one of six tables added this year, alongside new rankings dedicated to the fields of architecture, business and management, development studies, dentistry, and veterinary sciences.

In the first edition of this international art school ranking, the top spot goes to the UK’s Royal College of Art, followed by the US’s Parsons The New School for Design and Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). While the top 10 is dominated by art schools from these two countries, beyond this the picture becomes much more diverse, with the ranking serving to highlight leading art and design departments across the globe.

Celebrating leading art and design schools worldwide

The US accounts for 27 of the 100 top art schools featured, followed by the UK with 12 and Australia with 10. Canada, China and New Zealand each have four representatives, while Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Singapore and Sweden each feature three times. A total of 27 countries across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas have at least one leading art and design school included.

Continental Europe’s leading representative is Italy’s Politecnico di Milano (11^th), closely followed by Finland’s Aalto University (14^th) and the Netherlands’ Design Academy Eindhoven (19^th). The leading Asian positions are claimed by Hong Kong Polytechnic University (24^th), followed by China’s Tsinghua University (26^th) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (28^th). Australia makes its debut appearance with RMIT University (20^th), five places ahead of the University of New South Wales (25^th). There’s also a strong performance from leading art schools in the Latin American region, led by Mexico’s Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (22=) and Chile’s Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (29^th).

About the new art and design ranking

This new ranking of the world’s top universities for art and design is based on the same methodology used across the QS World University Rankings by Subject. This draws on major global surveys of academics and graduate employers, as well as data on research citations drawn from Scopus, the world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed research publications.

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