Two US universities renowned for their strength in technology have credited their interdisciplinary nature as the reason why they top Times Higher Educations World University Rankings (WUR) for arts and humanities subjects. Stanford University takes the #1 spot in the 2018 subject table for the seventh year in a row, while the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is second, after climbing seven places.

MIT improved across all five areas underlying the ranking methodology — teaching, research, citations, knowledge transfer, and international outlook. Harvard University, which was in joint first place last year, has fallen to third.

Richard Saller, dean of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, says that the institution regards arts and humanities subjects as essential to its mission of inspiring creativity for innovation, and grounding it in human values and knowledge of the human experience. As a result, the university has made a strong investment over the past decade in the humanities and arts, which are flourishing through interaction with scientific and technical disciplines, as well as traditional methods.

This years arts and humanities ranking includes 400 institutions, up from 100 last year. The US takes more than a quarter of these places (103), 35 of which make the top 100, down from 39 last year. Meanwhile, the UK has 56 representatives in total and 19 in the upper quartile, the same as last year.

For the first time in the history of the table, a Chinese institution makes the top 20; Peking University is 17th, up from 27th last year and joint 84th in 2016. Its Beijing neighbour Tsinghua University has also made gains, jumping 18 places to 48th.

THE Arts and humanities Top 10

Source: The WUR 2018, = joint rank