South Africa Has Nine Top Universities in the World

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Nine SA universities top the international list of best in the world.

South Africa (11 June 2021) – Nine South African universities have ranked among the best educational institutions in the world.

The QS World University Rankings has published its annual list of tertiary facilities worldwide. These rankings have been published since 2004.

The universities are:

University	2022 ranking	2021 ranking
University of Cape Town	226	220
University of the Witwatersrand	424	403
University of Johannesburg	434	439
Stellenbosch University	482	456
University of Pretoria	601-650	561-570
Rhodes University	801-1000	801-1000
University of KwaZulu-Natal	801-1000	801-1000
North-West University	1001-1200	1001+
University of the Western Cape	1001-1200	1001+

The universities are being evaluated according to the following six metrics:

Academic Reputation
Employer Reputation
Faculty/Student Ratio
Citations per faculty
International Faculty Ratio
International Student Ratio

Academic reputation (40%)

The highest weighting of any metric is allotted to an institution’s Academic Reputation score.

Employer reputation (10%)

The Employer Reputation metric is based on over 75,000 responses to the QS Employer Survey and asks employers to identify those institutions from which they source the most competent, innovative, effective graduates.

Faculty/Student Ratio (20%)

Teaching quality is typically cited by students as the metric of the highest importance to them when comparing institutions using a ranking.

Citations per faculty (20%)

They measure institutional research quality using our Citations per Faculty metric. To calculate it, they take the total number of citations received by all papers produced by an institution across a five-year period by the number of faculty members at that institution.

International faculty ratio/International student ratio (5% each)

A highly international university acquires and confers several advantages. It demonstrates an ability to attract faculty and students from across the world, which in turn suggests that it possesses a strong international brand.