The Center for World University Rankings’ (CWUR) list for 2020/21 has ranked the University of Cape Town (UCT) as the best on the African continent, and within the top 1.4% in the world.
The CWUR is a leading consulting organization providing policy advice, strategic insights, and consulting services to governments and universities to improve educational and research outcomes.
Their annual university ranking assessed 20 000 education institutions globally, considering factors like the quality of their education and training, faculty members and research. UCT landed in 268th place in the world according to the CWUR, earning the esteemed university the top spot in the country and continent.
The University of the Witwatersrand came in at number 275, Stellenbosch University at 429 and University of KwaZulu-Natal at 477.
The Cape’s most recognised university, however, has fallen 16 places since last year’s rankings. The university attributes this drop in ranking to a greater improvement of scoring for other universities and a relative drop in performance.
In the top three on CWUR’s list are Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University.
This year the CWUR assessed thousands of universities with only the top 2000 receiving a ranking.
In assessing the top education institutes around the world, CWUR used seven indicators.
– Quality of education(25%): alumni who have won major academic distinctions relative to the university’s size are weighed
– Alumni employment (25%): alumni who have held top executive positions at some of the world’s biggest companies are noted relative to the university’s size
– Quality of faculty (10%): faculty members who have won major academic distinctions are noted
– Research performance, with four sub categories that count for 10% each, these include:
– Number of research articles
– The number of research articles placed in top-tier journals
– The number of research articles in highly influential journals
– The number of highly cited research articles
As education across the world continues to battle through the challenges posed by COVID-19, Capetonians are still filled with pride as UCT proves its worth on a global scale despite the challenges it has faced this year.
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