Study reveals where top SA universities rank globally
Find out which South African university is the best of the best...
When it comes to tertiary education, everyone wants to receive the best they can afford.
Luckily in South Africa, there are many institutions that offer great educational services.
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But how do they rank amongst the universities in the world?
Webometrics has published its 2024 mid-year update on the global rankings of universities.
According to BusinessTech, the rankings are created by Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (the largest public research body in Spain).
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The researchers then compiled the ranking by examining the quality, quantity, and access to web content provided by the universities. The research group has stated that the rankings' original aim was to promote Web publication.
As other rankings focus only on a few relevant aspects, especially research results, a web indicators-based ranking better reflects the whole picture, as many other activities of professors and researchers are shown by their web presence.
Ultimately, the rankings are based not only on the universities' websites but also on their bibliometric (research mission) and their webometric (all missions) indicators.
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Webometrics shared that the rankings were based on the following three indicators:
- Visibility: The number of external networks (subnets) linking to the institution’s web pages (50%)
- Transparency or Openness: The number of citations from the Top 310 authors, excluding the top 30 outliers (10%)
- Excellence: The number of papers amongst the top 10% most cited in each one of all 27 disciplines of the full database over the last five years (40%)
The overall analysis includes 30,000 tertiary institutions globally, which includes colleges, private institutes, and universities.
The BusinessTech rankings only include the official universities in South Africa, and only four universities are in the top 500 globally.
One of the biggest changes in this year's rankings is that the University of Johannesburg has jumped above the University of KwaZulu-Natal to claim the fifth spot in SA and improved its global ranking by 58 places.
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Other universities that have been climbing higher are the Durban University of Technology, which went from 2,855th to 1,772nd, and Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, which broke into the top 3,000.
Here is the complete list of where South African universities ranked globally and locally:
Most of the SA universities managed to improve their global standing with 17 of the 26 climbing higher in the rankings.
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Main image courtesy of X/@UP