The University of Johannesburg (UJ) on Monday retained its spot among the world’s top universities.
UJ was included in the 2018/19 edition of the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR)‚ which were released on Monday – and it shot up nearly 150 positions from its debut ranking a year ago.
The university ranked 790‚ up from 951.
“The ranking confirms that our strategic focus on accessible global excellence and stature is bearing fruit‚ a continuing focus of UJ over the next decade‚” vice-chancellor and principal of UJ‚ Professor Tshilidzi Marwala‚ said.
While this was an improvement and a move in the right direction‚ UJ was still behind five other South African universities.
The University of Cape Town ranked first in South Africa and 223 on the CWU rankings‚ followed by the University of the Witwatersrand (230)‚ the University of KwaZulu-Natal (402)‚ University of Pretoria (438) and Stellenbosch University (448).
The North West University was ranked seventh in South Africa‚ and 964 of the 1‚000 global universities.
Three US universities took the first three rankings. Harvard University was ranked first‚ followed by Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Since 2012‚ the Center for World University Rankings independently measure a university’s quality of education and training of students‚ as well as the prestige of their academic staff members and the quality of their research without relying on reputational surveys and university data submissions.
For the 2018/19 edition of the CWU Rankings‚ 18‚000 higher education institutions were evaluated‚ among which only the best 1,000 research-intensive universities received a ranking.
CWUR employs seven performance indicators in its assessment and ranking of the world’s top universities‚ including quality of education‚ alumni employment research output‚ quality of publications and citations.
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