The University of Malta has dropped down a set of global rankings for several fields including arts, computer sciences and health.
In each case, the University of Malta (UM) fell into the next ranking bracket, following a multi-year trend where the Maltese university has struggled to climb the ranks.
Released on Thursday morning by the UK’s Times Higher Education (THE), the world university rankings by subject pit over 1,000 universities against each other.
In each subject, the top 100 institutions are given an exact place while the rest are placed in categories.
For example, this year, Malta placed between 601 and 800 in the clinical and health field, a dip from last year’s middle-of-the-field 501 to 600 category.
In both years, just over 1,000 universities were ranked for the subject.
The same change can be seen in the University of Malta's computer science ranking, dropping from the top 600 in 2023 to the top 800.
In 2024, 1,027 universities were ranked in computer science, putting Malta within the bottom third there.
In another dip, the University of Malta’s arts and humanities rating fell into the next category, from the top 500 to the top 600.
Good news for economics and psychology
The UM gained recognition in two separate subjects that the institution previously had not been ranked for.
In both business and economics and psychology, the UM was placed in the top 500 universities, putting the country around the average ranked school, according to THE.
However, THE’s rankings for psychology featured a much shorter list than other subjects, with only a total of 621 universities ranked in the field. This leaves Malta closer to the bottom of the list, around the lower quarter of those ranked. There was no change from last year for education (401 to 500), engineering (801 to 1,000) and physical sciences and social sciences (601 to 800).
The university remained unranked in two fields: life sciences and law.
US and UK continue to dominate
In every subject, the rankings were dominated by two countries: the US and the UK. Only six other countries made it into single-digit rankings across various subjects: China, Canada, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia.
Each ranking is based on five areas within that subject: teaching, research environment, research quality, international outlook and industry. Each subject gives different categories varying levels of importance depending on the field.
For example, arts and humanities had less weight placed on citations due to the “research culture” of the subject. Apart from subject rankings, THE last month published its yearly list of world university rankings based on similar criteria.
Since 2022, Malta has remained in the top 1,000 ranked universities, each year staying in the same bracket (801 to 1,000) despite a noticeable increase in participating schools.
In 2022, just over 2,100 universities were ranked. This has increased to over 2,600 this year, putting UM in the top third of ranked universities.
As part of the ranking, each university is given an overall score which the UM has gradually increased over the years, now sitting at 36.9. In comparison, the University of Oxford scored 98.5, coming in first place.
Correction October 30, 2023: Due to an editing error, a previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the faculty of engineering was ranked in the 1,000 to 1,200 bracket.