Ranking THE top 14 universities in South Africa

The Times Higher Education (THE) group has published its World University Rankings for 2025, listing 14 South African institutions among the 2,100 universities assessed.

The THE World University Rankings have a key focus on research-intensive universities across all core indicators.

According to the group, its third (3.0) version of the assessment methodology now looks at 18 performance indicators to provide a comprehensive and balanced comparison between universities.

One of the metrics (study abroad) currently has zero weight but will be counted in future iterations of the ranking, it said.

The 18 performance indicators are grouped into five areas:

• Teaching (the learning environment);
• Research environment (volume, income and reputation);
• Research quality (citation impact, research strength, research excellence and research influence);
• International outlook (staff, students and research); and
• Industry (income and patents).

The 2025 rankings looked at 2,092—185 of which are new entries when compared with last year. Notably, institutions provide and sign off their institutional data for use in the rankings.

The rankings are based on 157 million citations, 18 million research publications, and survey responses from more than 93,000 scholars globally.

Looking at South Africa’s universities, 14 made the cut, two more than last year.

The University of Cape Town continued its streak as the top-rated university in the country, though it fell down the global rankings, slipping to 180th from 167th before.

All universities outside the top 300 are not ranked individually but rather fall into ranges. For local universities that remained in the same range, it is difficult to tell whether the slipped or improved their positioning in the overall ranking.

However, many of South Africa’s universities fell out of their ranges, slipping significantly.

The University of Pretoria slipped out of the 501-600 range into the 601-800 range, which North West University fell out of that range into the 801-1000 range.

Notably, the two new entries for South Africa were Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (ranking in the 1201-1500 range) and the University of Fort Hare (ranking outside of the top 1500).

The rankings of South Africa’s universities can be found below:

Globally, the University of Oxford took the top spot for a record-breaking ninth consecutive year, beating Harvard University’s previous record of eight consecutive years at the number one spot from 2004 to 2011.

However, THE noted that the reputation of the UK higher education sector is increasingly fragile as its top universities have declined for the second year as the sector faces a severe financial crisis.

“The UK recorded the worst year-on-year decline in research reputation among large countries with at least 50 ranked institutions. UK universities received 19% of votes (for teaching and research combined) in the survey in 2016, compared with 15%,” it said.

US universities dominate the top 10 taking seven spots.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is now the highest-ranked US university in second place, its best-ever performance, while Stanford University dropped from second to sixth. The country has 23 universities in the top 50, 38 in the top 100 and 55 in the top 200 – more than any other country.

However, THE noted that the global reputation of US universities is at a record low.

“American universities received 47% of the votes (for teaching and research combined) in THE’s 2016 reputation survey and this dropped sharply to 38% this year – the steepest long-term decline of any country,” it said.

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