South African Universities Top Globally: These Two Universities Are Taking It To A Whole New Level

Times Higher Education (THE), a World University Ranking, has published its annual publication of University rankings listing top 1400 universities for 2020.

10 South African universities have appeared in the list while two of its Universities emerged in the top 200.

The ranking is based on 13 carefully calibrated performance pointers that measure an institution’s execution across teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. Some of these factors include learning/teaching environment, research reputation, citations, international outlook of students and staff as well as the knowledge transfer.

Professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers independently audit the final result of the ranking.

University of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) ranked in position 136th and 194th respectively.

Other South African universities that appeared in THE list are Stellenbosch University, the University of KwaZulu Natal, North-West University, University of Johannesburg, University of Pretoria, University of the Western Cape, Tshwane University of Technology and the University of South Africa (Unisa).

Meanwhile, the University of Oxford has been ranked position one for the fourth year in a row.

California Institute of Technology has risen three places to become second while the University of Cambridge comes third in the global list.

Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Harvard University, Yale University, University of Chicago and Imperial College London took positions 4 to 10 respectively.

As per regions, Europe had the most top-ranking universities in the top 200 while the United States was the country with most institutions in the top 200.

“Europe must overcome serious hurdles if it is to maintain its strong position in future global rankings. Economic stagnation and increasingly isolationist political tendencies both threaten the positions of European institutions at a time when international cooperation and investment is key,” Ellie Bothwell, THE’s rankings editor said in a statement.

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