UCT achieves top world ranking

09 September 2011 - 02:35 By RETHA GROBBELAAR
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Only one South African university features in the top 300 on a new world university ranking list released this week.

Coming in at number 156, the University of Cape Town is the only local university within the top 300 on the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings 2011/2012.

Criteria for the rankings include the number of foreign students attracted, employers' opinions on graduates' quality, and academics' ratings of universities - which carries the biggest weight.

Almost 34000 academics were polled. They were not allowed to favour their own institution.

Quacquarelli Symonds, which is a research company, evaluated 2919 universities, including 15 in South Africa , and ranked 712 of them. The top 10 universities are all based in the UK and US, with the University of Cambridge topping the list.

Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came in second and third respectively.

UCT rose from last year's 161th position and is the only African university in the top 300 this year.

UCT spokesman Gerda Kruger said South Africans received "world-class education at home".

She warned, however, that paying too much attention to rankings can be risky for the country's universities, especially when they are designed with developed countries in mind.

"In the South African context, where we have to allocate resources to bridging the gap between inadequate schooling and the high standards of a leading university, a focus on the rankings might divert resources away from spending on improving access."

Universit y faculties were also ranked. The engineering and technology faculty at UCT came in at 227th and 169th for life sciences and medicine, while the same faculty at the University of the Witwatersrand came in at 281th.

Wits was 360th last year.

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