Royal College Tops League Tables As Best In The World

Best art colleges In the world

The Royal College of Art has been named the top-ranking Fine Art and design school in the world, according to the annual league table of the world’s best universities. QS is a rateing agency, that gathers data by linking high achievers from the graduate programmes and executive communities around the world with leading business schools, postgraduate departments at universities and with employers, through websites, events, e-guides and technical solutions.

The college which was  founded in 1837 as the Government School of Design, finished with 96 points in the QS system, which measures institutions by their reputations with academics and employers. It ranks the number of international students and staff, the ratio of faculty members to students, and the number of citations referencing work by each universities in research papers published within the last year.

The RCA’s alumni include some of the art and design industry’s most recognisable names including  Peter Blake, David Hockney and R B Kitaj, Gavin Turk, Tracey Emin and Jake and Dinos Chapman, among its ranks and Thomas Heatherwick and Jasper Morrison. Past teachers have included designers like Ron Arad and Tord Boontje, although the institution recently lost some of its key faculty members.

“The RCA is highly selective, taking the world’s most talented artists and designers,” said RCA rector Paul Thompson. “Those students go on to transform the world – in fine art, fashion, automotive design and engineering. The QS ranking for Art and Design are another resounding endorsement of London’s universities, following hard on the heels of recent surveys, which place UCL, ICL, Kings and LSE within the top tier of world ranked universities.”

This is 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.

Top 10 Universities for Art & Design

(Based on the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2015)

1)Royal College of Art UK

2)Parsons The New School for Design US

3)Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) US

4)Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) US

5)Pratt Institute US

6)School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) US

7)California Institute of the Arts US

8)University of the Arts London UK

9)Art Center College of Design US

10)Glasgow School of Art (GSA) UK

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