Best universities in South Africa vs emerging markets

 ·3 Dec 2015
University of Cape Town

The Times Higher Education has published a list of the top universities in emerging economies, with two South African universities featuring in the top 10.

The ranking: BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings 2016 includes only institutions in countries classified as emerging by FTSE, including the “BRICS” nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

China dominates the ranking with five universities inside the top, and 39 places in the top 200.

Taiwan is second best with 24 universities in the top 200, although it only has one inside the top 10. South Africa has six universities inside the top 200.

The 2015-16 rankings include 200 institutions from 35 countries, up from 100 from 18 countries last year.

In Africa, Egypt returns to the ranking, having had no institutions represented the top 100 list last year, while Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana are also represented.

Read: 10 best universities in Africa in 2015

Top SA Universities

# University Country Score
4 University of Cape Town South Africa 56.5
6 University of the Witwatersrand South Africa 49.3
11 Stellenbosch University South Africa 43.3
46 University of Kwa-Zulu Natal South Africa 31.8
77 University of Pretoria South Africa 27.4
197 University of South Africa South Africa 16.5

The performance indicators are grouped into five areas:

  • Teaching (the learning environment)
  • Research (volume, income and reputation)
  • Citations (research influence)
  • International outlook (staff, students and research)
  • Industry income (knowledge transfer)

UCT scores highly for Industry income and Citations   –  92.8 and 85.6 respectively.

Wits scores an impressive 99.7 points for Industry income, and 76. points for Citations. It falls down dramatically in teaching, with 26.2 points.

Stellenbosch scores full marks for Industry income, but also scores poorly for teaching, with 28.2 points.

KZN University’s best mark is for International outlook, at 58.6 points, with teaching its worst performer, with 20.3 points.

Pretoria University scores well for Industry income (52.4), but only 17.5 points for Citations.

Unisa meanwhile, achieves only 11.3 points for Citations, and 28.8 for Industry income, its best performer.

Read: Here are South Africa’s 26 universities

Top 10 emerging economy and BRICS universities

# University Country Score
1 Peking University China 73.8
2 Tsinghua University China 72.6
3 Lomonosov Moscow University Russia 59.7
4 University of Cape Town South Africa 56.5
5 National Taiwan University Taiwan 50.8
6 University of the Witwatersrand South Africa 49.3
7 University of Science and Technology of China China 48.6
8 Zhejiang Unversity China 45.9
9 Universidade de Sao Paulo Brazil 44.5
10 Shanghai Jiao Tong University China 43.7

More on university rankings

Top South African universities in BRICS ranking

This is South Africa’s best ‘young’ university

SA university MBA rated best value for money in the world

What does a world class university look like?

Show comments
Subscribe to our daily newsletter