Annenberg named best school for communication

The Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism was ranked No. 1 in the world for communication and media studies in the 2017 QS World University Rankings by Subject. This is the third straight year USC has held the top spot in this category.

The QS subject rankings have been published annually since 2011, and this year’s list features rankings in 46 fields, its largest and most comprehensive list to date.

The rankings’ purpose is to assist students and scholars in discovering the best universities in each subject area.

Other universities in the top five for communication and media studies include the University of Amsterdam, the London School of Economics and Political Science, Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A university’s ranking is determined by several performance indicators, including academic reputation, citations per published paper, employer reputation and H-index score, which measures the productivity and impact of papers.

Surveys sent to over 70,000 academics around the world contribute to the academic reputation score, which measures universities’ quality of research in multiple subjects and overall prestige. Over 35,000 employers provide feedback regarding the domestic and international universities and specific fields of study from which they prefer to recruit.

The indicators are weighted differently between subject rankings to correspond with the level of research involved in each area. For the communications and media studies category, a school’s academic reputation accounts for 50 percent of the total score, while employer reputation, citations per paper and H-index measure comprise 10 percent, 20 percent and 20 percent of the ranking, respectively.