Lifestyle

2024 ranking of all 26 universities in South Africa

Staff Writer

 ·31 Jan 2024

Webometrics has published its latest global ranking of universities in 2024, with the University of Cape Town once again coming out on top.

The Webometrics Ranking of World Universities is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain.

The research group’s ranking has a special focus on open access to data from global universities and lists institutions based on the quantity and quality of their web content.

The group stresses that the ranking has nothing to do with university websites – ie., the popularity, design or accessibility – but rather link analysis, which includes bibliographic citations used by other university rankings and also third-party involvement with university activities.

“As other rankings focused only on a few relevant aspects, especially research results, web indicator-based ranking reflects better the whole picture, as many other activities of professors and researchers are showed by their web presence,” the group said.

Webometrics said that the rankings are mainly based on three core indicators.

• Visibility: The number of external networks (subnets) linking to the institution’s web pages ( weighted 50%)

• Transparency or Openness: The number of citations from the Top 310 authors, excluding the top 30 outliers (10%)

• Excellence: The number of papers amongst the top 10% most cited in each one of all 27 disciplines of the full database over the last five years (40%)

Another big differentiator between the Webometrics ranking and other university rankings is that its methodology and data collections allows it to rank a large number of higher learning institutions – including smaller colleges and institutes.

The ranking thus includes all 26 of South Africa’s universities, which have been tabled below.

As with previous years, the University of Cape Town has ranked tops in the country – but it has slipped down the global ranking from 237th in mid-2023 to 256th at the start of 2024.

The University of the Witwatersrand has also maintained its number-two spot in the local ranking, and also slipped globally, but only by three positions to 395th.

A change from the 2023 ranking is that Stellenbosch University has climbed to third position in South Africa – ranking 442nd globally (actually down one place) – while the University of Pretoria has slipped to 445th.

The University of KwaZulu Natal maintaines fifth position, but like the other top schools has dropped, globally.

Only four local universities are ranked among the top 500 in the world.

Not all of South Africa’s universities dropped down the rankings, however. Seven universities climbed the rankings, albeit marginally in most cases, leading to several changes in the overall local rankings.

Read: University fees 2024: how much it costs to study in South Africa