{"id":119219,"date":"2016-04-06T20:26:29","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T18:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=119219"},"modified":"2016-04-07T08:37:35","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T06:37:35","slug":"south-africas-best-universities-as-ranked-by-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/119219\/south-africas-best-universities-as-ranked-by-you\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa’s best universities as ranked by you"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new university ranking site, U-Multirank<\/a>, aims to break down the “over-simplified” league table approach to listing universities.<\/p>\n

The group aims to compare “like with like”, and pairs institutions with similar activity profiles across five main categories and 16 indicators.<\/p>\n

The U-Multirank system is designed to cater for a user-driven approach to ranking. That is, the group does not rank universities based on a weighted score, but instead requires users to define the terms in which universities are matched.<\/p>\n

“There is no theoretical or empirical justification for such composite scores,” the group said.<\/p>\n

“Empirical studies have shown that the weighting schemes of existing global rankings are not robust: small changes in the weights assigned to the underlying measures (the indicator scores) will considerably change the composite scores and hence the league table positions of individual universities.”<\/p>\n

Therefore, the U-Multirank methodology looks at the scores of universities on individual indicators and places these in five performance groups.<\/p>\n

The group’s ranking works on a symbol system from A to E, where A is “very good” and E is “weak”.<\/p>\n

Here is a breakdown of South Africa’s best university, per indicator.<\/p>\n

The University of Cape Town – considered the best university in the country –\u00a0ranks top in 6 of the 16 groups.<\/p>\n

Teaching and learning<\/h3>\n
\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Indicator<\/th>\nTop-ranked University<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Bachelor Graduation rate<\/td>\nUniversity of KwaZulu Natal<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Masters Graduation rate<\/td>\nStellenbosch University<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Graduating on time (bachelors)<\/td>\nWits University<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Graduating on time (masters)<\/td>\nUniversity of the Free State<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Research<\/h3>\n
\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n
Indicator<\/th>\nTop-ranked University<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Citation rate<\/td>\nUniversity of Cape Town<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Research publications<\/td>\nUniversity of Cape Town<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
External research income<\/td>\nDurban University of Technology<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Knowledge transfer<\/h3>\n
\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Indicator<\/th>\nTop-ranked University<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Co-publications with industrial partners<\/td>\nWits University<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Income from private sources<\/td>\nDurban University of Technology<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Patents awarded<\/td>\nUniversity of Cape Town<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Publications cited in patents<\/td>\nUniversity of Cape Town<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

International Orientations<\/h3>\n
\n
\n\n\n\n\n
Indicator<\/th>\nTop-ranked University<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Student mobility<\/td>\nUniversity of Cape Town<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
International joint publications<\/td>\nUniversity of Cape Town<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Regional engagement<\/h3>\n
\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n
Indicator<\/th>\nTop-ranked University<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Bachelor graduates working in the region<\/td>\nN\/A<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Regional joint publications<\/td>\nDurban University of Technology<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Income from regional sources<\/td>\nDurban University of Technology<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

General picture<\/h3>\n

Taking all symbols into account, and assigning numbers (A = 1, B = 2, and so on), it is possible to determine a general, non-weighted overview of South Africa’s universities.<\/p>\n

In some cases data is not available or not applicable for certain indicators, thus the averages below are based on the symbols for indicators where information was available.<\/p>\n

\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
#<\/th>\nUniversity<\/th>\nAverage Symbol<\/th>\nNon-weighted score<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/td>\nUniversity of Cape Town<\/td>\nB<\/td>\n2.00<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>\nWits University<\/td>\nC<\/td>\n2.75<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>\nStellenbosch University<\/td>\nC<\/td>\n3.07<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>\nUniversity of KwaZulu Natal<\/td>\nC<\/td>\n3.25<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>\nDurban University of Technology<\/td>\nC<\/td>\n3.33<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6<\/td>\nUniversity of Pretoria<\/td>\nC<\/td>\n3.43<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
7<\/td>\nNorth West University<\/td>\nD<\/td>\n3.50<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
8<\/td>\nUniversity of Free State<\/td>\nD<\/td>\n3.80<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Across 8 indicators, the University of Cape Town maintains a B average, making it the top rated university in the country. Durban University of Technology, with 15 datapoints featured across the most indicators, is ranked 5th, with a C average.<\/p>\n

Wits University ranked second, followed by Stellenbosch University and the University of KwaZulu Natal – which along with the University of Pretoria (6th) all shared a C average with Durban Tech.<\/p>\n

North West University and the University of the Free State rounded off South African insitutes in the ranking, with a D average.<\/p>\n

UCT was also ranked as the top University in Africa out of all 23 listed institutions, using this method.<\/p>\n

More on universities<\/h3>\n

Stellenbosch University ordered to teach in Afrikaans<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Why you shouldn\u2019t waste your time with \u201cuseless\u201d university degrees in SA<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is how much SA university students have to pay at registration<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is South Africa\u2019s most globally attractive university<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa’s best university depends on what you’re looking at – and now there’s a new ranking which allows users to define which aspect of tertiary education they’d like to base their comparison on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":50573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[26,7137],"class_list":["post-119219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-headline","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119219"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119333,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119219\/revisions\/119333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}