Once again, the University of Cape Town (UCT) has been ranked as the best university in Africa by the Centre for World University Rankings (CWUR) in its 2023 list.
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Only the top 2 000 universities worldwide received a global ranking after the CWUR evaluated over 20 000 institutions.
Elijah Moholola, a spokesman for UCT, claims that factors like research output, high-quality research, influence, and citations are used to rank the institutions.
According to Moholola, UCT is ranked in the top 1.4% of universities worldwide.
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‘UCT’s highest ranked indicator is quality of education, which at 182nd position was down four places from last year,’ Moholoa said in a statement.
‘The alumni employment indicator (placed 224th) performed well and continued its climb, moving up 13 places compared to last year, which was also up 23 places on the previous year. The research performance indicator (ranked 245th) improved by five places compared to last year.’
Stellenbosch University managed to claim the 454th spot globally.
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) claimed a perfect score to be ruled the top tertiary institution in the world, followed by the University of Cambridge and Stanford University.
Last year, the QS World University Rankings listed UCT as the best university in Africa. However, its score had decreased from previous years while the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) continued to grow.
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UCT ranked 237 globally among over 1400 institutions, a while away from its place at 141 in 2015.
In 2020, UCT received a score of 44.1, which decreased by almost 13% in 2022 to 39.4 points. The biggest knock resulted from UCT’s citations per faculty, which means that research quality is not performing as well as it once did.
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UCT ranked best university in Africa, but score continues to decline
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