The university continues to fare well in the U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings of the nation’s best graduate schools.

Among the programs ranked each year, education and law increased their rankings while business, engineering and medicine maintained top-20 rankings in the magazine’s 2011 edition of “America’s Best Graduate Schools” released March 15.

The School of Education moved up five notches from 14th in 2010 to ninth this year, and the Law School moved up two spots to seventh. The Stephen M. Ross School of Business (14th), College of Engineering (ninth) and the Medical School (research 10th and primary care 20th), all dropped slightly in the rankings.

In addition to the main program rankings, U-M was rated on 32 specialties. Of those, three were ranked first: educational psychology, higher education administration and industrial/manufacturing engineering. Nuclear engineering and healthcare management remained in first. All told, 22 of the 32 specialties in which U-M is ranked either improved their positions or stayed the same.

Other newly issued rankings include:

• Business specialties: accounting (5), executive MBA (8), finance (11), international (5), management (5), marketing (9), part-time MBA (4), production/operations (5) and supply chain/logistics (11).

• Education specialties: curriculum/instruction (7), educational psychology (2), educational policy (8), elementary education (7), higher education administration (2) and secondary education (4).

• Engineering specialties: aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical (5), biomedical/bioengineering (12), chemical (13), civil (8), computer engineering (7), electrical/electronic/communications (7), environmental (6), industrial/manufacturing (2), materials (7), mechanical (5) and nuclear (1).

• Health specialties: healthcare management (1) and nursing (6).

• Law specialties: clinical training (10) and international law (9).

• Medical specialties: family medicine (4), geriatrics (7), internal medicine (6) and women’s health (9).

• Nursing specialties: adult nurse practitioner (4), family nurse practitioner (4), nursing service administration (3), nursing-midwifery (10), public health (4).

Details on the methodologies and additional rankings are available online at www.usnews.com.