Lifestyle

The best universities: South Africa vs emerging markets

Staff Writer

 ·14 Feb 2017

Times Higher Education has released its BRICS and emerging economies university rankings for 2017, detailing the best universities outside of the developing world.

The ranking includes only institutions in countries classified as “advanced emerging”, “secondary emerging” or “frontier” by the FTSE, including the BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

China dominates the list, taking 52 spots in the top 300. Six of the country’s universities make the elite top 10, including Fudan University, which rose 11 places to reach sixth place this year, and Peking and Tsinghua universities, which hold on to the top two spots for the fourth year running.

India also showed significant gains with several of its universities appearing in the top 25 for the first time.

However, while the two Asian giants have improved their showing, the performance of the other BRICS nations is waning, largely because of increased competition as a result of expanding the list to rank 300 universities from 41 countries, up from 200 institutions in 35 nations last year.

Brazil no longer has a university in the top 10, as the University of São Paulo slipped four places to 13th – its lowest ever position – while half of South Africa’s eight universities have fallen.

According to the report the University of Cape Town is the highest-ranked South African university in 4th place, followed by the University of the Witwatersrand in 8th.

Much further down the list the University of Stellenbosch can be found in 42nd place, while the University of the Kwa-Zulu Natal in 58th and University of Pretoria in 74th round up the top five.

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