Manchester School of Architecture (MSA) has retained its impressive position as fifth best in the world in the QS World Subject Rankings.
MSA, a collaboration between Manchester Met and the University of Manchester, is ranked 5th globally in the 2025 league table, maintaining the success of the last two years and comfortably holding onto its spot in the top 11 since 2016.
Joining MSA’s success are Manchester Met’s art and design, sport, and hospitality, with these subject areas scoring in the top 100 for academic and employer reputation, research impact and quality, and global engagement.
A prestigious measure of global success, the QS World Subject Rankings highlight the world’s top performing universities across 55 narrow subjects and five broad subject areas. The rankings for 2025 involved an analysis of the reputation and research output of over 5,200 institutions.
Stand-out data from this year’s individual scores out of 100 include MSA’s 98.9 for employability and employer reputation and its 92.4 for ‘citations per paper’ – a measure of research impact.
Professor Kevin Singh, Head of Manchester School of Architecture at Manchester Met, said: “Once again, it is fantastic to see that the quality of our teaching and research has been recognised on a global scale, exceeding the performance of so many other prestigious schools. Congratulations to our staff and students – it really is testament to their dedication, talent and hard work.
“It is wonderful to see our near-perfect score for employability, which is evidenced by our unrivalled reputation with employers and the impressive numbers of our graduates who go on to enjoy career success in their field.
“The top quality of our curriculum and our research impact is also clear to see within the rankings. I look forward to building on this already excellent work with more new innovative student work and academic research which will continue to boost the architecture, landscape and urbanism sectors in the UK and globally.”
Published annually, the QS World Subject Rankings are compiled according to academic reputation, employer reputation and research impact and help prospective students to identify leading universities in particular subjects.
MSA is an innovative collaboration between Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Manchester, bringing together two schools with more than 100 years’ experience, more than 150 experts in their architectural fields and more than 1,200 students from 80 countries.
Manchester Met’s rich offering to its students includes, amongst other programmes, MSA Collective, a series of cultural events that welcome key figures in the world of architecture like Sir Peter Cook, Thomas Heatherwick, Lord Norman Foster and George Clarke.