South Africa’s best universities vs BRICS countries
The 2016 edition of the QS University Rankings: BRICS, features a dedicated ranking of the top 250 universities in the five countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
These five nations exert significant regional influence, and cumulatively account for 42% of the world’s population.
The rankings draw on eight key performance indicators, reflecting global reputation, internationalization, academic staff levels, and research production and impact.
Chinese universities dominate the list, led by Tsinghua University (1st) and Peking University (2nd), China now occupies the top five spots in the ranking, and accounts for almost half (23) of the top 50.
The University of Cape Town is the best SA based university (14th), the same position as in 2015.
For 2016, the ranking has been extended to feature the top 250 BRICS universities – from 200 previously. This expansion particularly benefits Brazil and India, which now have 54 and 44 entries respectively (compared to 40 and 31 last year).
China still remains the most-represented nation, with 86 entries, followed by Russia (55). South Africa has 11 universities featured.
Three local institutions have climbed the rankings in 2016: University of the Witwatersrand, University of Johannesburg, and Rhodes University.
Top SA Universities
| 2016 | University | 2015 |
| 14 | University of Cape Town | 14 |
| 26 | University of the Witwatersrand | 28 |
| 35 | Stellenbosch University | 34 |
| 49 | University of Pretoria | 49 |
| 66 | University of Johannesburg | 67 |
| 72 | University of Kwa-Zulu Natal | 68 |
| 75 | Rhodes University | 79 |
| 111-120 | University of the Western Cape | 100 |
| 131-140 | University of the Free State | 121-130 |
| 151-200 | North-West University | 151-200 |
| 151-200 | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University | 151-200 |
Top 10 BRICS universities
| 2016 | University | 2015 |
| 1 | Tsinghua University | 1 |
| 2 | Peking University | 2 |
| 3 | Fudan University | 3 |
| 4 | University of Science and Technology of China | =6 |
| 5 | Shanghai Jiao Tong University | =6 |
| 6 | Indian Institute of Science Bangalore | 5 |
| 7 | Lomonosov Moscow State University | 4 |
| 8 | Nanjing University | 8 |
| 9 | Zhejiang University | 11 |
| 10 | Universidade de São Paulo | 5 |
The ranking also reflects the particular success of Chinese and South African institutions in attracting academics from other countries.
Between them, these two nations occupy almost all of the top 20 positions for proportion of international faculty members, along with two Russian institutions.
Meanwhile Russian universities fare notably well when the proportion of international students is considered, with the highest performers on this measure also including South Africa’s Rhodes University and China’s University of International Business and Economics.
Proportion of International Students
| # | University | Country |
| 1 | RUDN University | Russia |
| 2 | Rhodes University | SA |
| 3 | Tomsk Polytechnic University | Russia |
| 4 | National University of Science and Technology ‘MISiS’ | Russia |
| 5 | Tomsk State University | Russia |
| 6 | University of International Business and Economics | China |
| 7 | Novosibirsk State University | Russia |
| 8 | Lomonosov Moscow State University | Russia |
| 9 | Peking University | China |
| 10 | University of Cape Town | SA |
QS said it evaluated 420 universities from the five nations for the 2016 rankings.
According to the QS University ranking methodology, the following weights were applied to determine its ranks:
- Academic reputation (30%)
- Employer reputation (20%)
- Faculty/student ratio (20%)
- Staff with a PhD (10%)
- Papers per faculty (10%)
- Citations per paper (5%)
- International faculty (2.5%)
- International students (2.5%)
More on university rankings
Top South African universities in BRICS ranking
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