DURBAN – Six South African universities including the University of Johannesburg (UJ) have been ranked among the Top 100 universities in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) BRICS University Rankings for 2019.
Although the university was ranked fifth among the 13 South African universities that were ranked, it was ranked at 61 out of the Top 100.
A total of 403 universities, an increase from the 300 universities in 2017, in the five BRICS countries including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa were considered for the 2019 rankings.
A larger QS survey database as well as high levels of competition, and an increased number of assessed BRICS universities are the factors that impact the top South African universities the most.
Since 2014, UJ has gained two places in this ranking. Over the five considered years, the university moved up twice and fell twice. Despite the three-place drop from last year’s rank of 58, UJ’s overall score increased derived from the increased scores obtained for the eight performance indicators. The eight performance indicators are global academic and employer reputation, internationalisation of academic staff and students, academic staff qualification levels, ratio of academic staff to students, and research productivity and impact.
Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of UJ said, "In fact, UJ improved markedly across the board increasing its scores in each performance indicator. The University scored very well for its intake of both international students and international academic staff. This is a testament to the effectiveness of the UJ strategy to increase its global standing".
Here is a look at the South African universities that were in the top 100:
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SA Rankings
BRICS
Rankings
University
1
22
University of Cape Town
2
40
University of Witwatersrand
3
45
University of Pretoria
4
51
Stellenbosch University
5
61
University of Johannesburg
6
85
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Here is the list of the top 10 BRICS universities:
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BRICS
Ranking
University
Country
1
Tsinghua University
China
2
Peking University
China
3
Fudan University
China
4
University of Science
and Technology of
China
China
5
Zhenjiang University
China
6
Lomonosov Moscow
State University
Russia
7
Shanghai Jiao Ting
University
China
8
Indian Institute of
Technology Bombay
(IITB)
India
9
Nanjing University
China
10
Indian Institute of
Science
India