Harper Adams continues to be recognised for world class employer reputation

Posted 10 March 2020

Harper Adams University has ranked for a third time as the top university in the UK and second in the world for Agriculture and Forestry employer reputation.

The 2020 QS World University Subject Rankings, released a few days ago, lists institutions across four key indicators of performance. The Agriculture and Forestry table demonstrates that Harper Adams University continues to excel in the area of employer reputation.

The well-established annual rankings, compiled since 2004 by global higher education analysts, QS Quacquarelli Symonds, provide comparative data on the performance of 13,138 individual university programmes taken by students at 1,368 universities. These institutions are based in 83 countries, across 48 academic disciplines and five broad faculty areas.

The employer reputation indicator is unique based on survey responses from employers around the globe.The QS organisation survey looks at, which institutions are regarded by the world’s hiring managers as nurturing the most talented, hireable graduates. The dataset for this indicator is derived from insights offered by nearly 45,000 graduate employers worldwide – the world’s largest repository of informed employer opinion about graduate strength.

Harper Adams rose to prominence in the employer reputation indicator in the 2018 rankings, coming second only to AgroParisTech University, a similarly small higher education institution focused on agricultural education and research. AgroParisTech retained the top employer reputation ranking in 2020.

Commenting on the University’s performance this year, which also saw improvements in the University’s measures for academic reputation and the productivity and impact of published work by academic staff, Vice-Chancellor, Dr David Llewellyn, said: “We are thrilled to have once again demonstrated the value of our strong and extensive links with industry with a top rating in the UK and a world class performance in the measure for agriculture and forestry employer reputation this year.

“To have achieved this outcome for the third year in a row reflects extremely well on the work of all of our staff, on the fantastic performance of our students on their industrial placements, and our graduates when they enter the workplace.

“We owe a huge thank you to the employers with whom we work in support of our education and research activities, and we hope to build on this very positive outcome in future years.”

The full subject table for Agriculture and Forestry can be found here.