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US News & World Report has published its 2021 Best Global Universities rankings, which includes a list of the top 13 tertiary learning institutions in South Africa - 11 of which, including Unisa, are ranked among the top 1 000 in the world.

The overall rankings encompass the top 1 500 institutions spread across 81 countries - up from 75 countries last year - and are the largest and most comprehensive assessment of research universities worldwide, it said.

South Africa’s universities largely climbed the global rankings in 2020/21, with 13 institutions ranked.

The University of Cape Town remains the top university locally, and in Africa, climbing to its highest point in three years, at #103.

Unisa placed #9 in South Africa and #921 in the world, up from #951 last year. It was the only university to change places in the local ranking, going up one place above Rhodes University.

Other universities which climbed the rankings include Stellenbosch University, UKZN, North-West University, Unisa, the University of the Free State and the Tshwane University of Technology.

Rhodes, the University of Johannesburg, the University of Pretoria, the University of the Western Cape and Nelson Mandela University moved down the list.

The 2021 Best Global Universities rankings are based on data and metrics provided by Clarivate, a research and analytics firm. The Best Global Universities rankings are entirely based on schools’ academic research performance, such as highly cited papers, and global and regional research reputations.

The 13 indicators the group looks at (and their weightings) are:

  • Global research reputation - 12.5%
  • Regional research reputation - 12.5%
  • Number of publications that are among the 10% most cited - 12.5%
  • Percentage of total publications that are among the 10% most cited - 10%
  • Publications - 10%
  • Normalised citation impact - 10%
  • Total citations - 7.5%
  • International collaboration - 5%
  • Percentage of total publications with international collaboration - 5%
  • Number of highly cited papers that are among the top 1% most cited in their respective field - 5%
  • Percentage of total publications that are among the top 1% most highly cited papers - 5%
  • Books - 2.5%
  • Conferences - 2.5%

The top 10 schools in the overall Best Global Universities ranking are similar to last year’s edition, with Harvard University in Massachusetts again topping the list, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University in California.

Most of the top 10 schools are located in the US, with the exception of two schools in the United Kingdom: the University of Oxford, ranked fifth, and the University of Cambridge, ranked ninth.

China has the second-highest number of institutions, at 176, and the UK has the third-largest contingent, at 87. Universities in four countries that weren’t represented in the rankings last year made the cut this year: Algeria, Armenia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

* Compiled by Sharon Farrell, Editor, Department of Institutional Advancement

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Publish date: 2020-10-21 00:00:00.0

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