Harper Adams

Harper Adams has climbed the international university rankings for Agriculture and Forestry, making it into the 151-200 group.

The QS World University Rankings for 2018 show that Harper Adams had leapt from the 251-300 segment to the 151-200 group, and is only one of 14 ranked UK institutions to have improved by two groups this year.

The league table takes into account four main measures of performance, two of which provide indicators of research strength more closely aligned to fundamental science rather than the applied science undertaken by Harper Adams, the university said.

The two other measures are based on feedback about institutional reputation from worldwide surveys undertaken among academics and employers.

In the criteria of academic reputation, based on survey responses from over 75,000 academics across all subject areas, Harper Adams ranked second in the UK and 58th in the world.

Among the UK institutions, only the University of Reading had a better performance on this measure.

For employer reputation, where the rankings drew upon survey responses from over 40,000 graduate employers worldwide, Harper Adams was placed first in the UK and second in the world, after only Agro Paris Tech.

Commenting on the university’s performance this year, vice-chancellor Dr David Llewellyn said: “This is only the second time we have been included in the QS World University Subject Rankings, and to have substantially improved our performance this year is a remarkable result for our staff and students.

“We have more to do in terms of growing our research profile, but it is evident that our national and international reputation is building amongst the global academic community and particularly amongst graduate employers.

“To have been highly placed, not only amongst UK universities, but also in the employer reputation measure worldwide, is a tremendous achievement.”