The University of Cape Town (UCT) has come out tops in Africa in the ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2021.
It has been ranked in 201-300 band by ARWU 2021, published on 15 August 2021.
This latest ranking means UCT leads in Africa in all five major world university rankings: Times Higher Education (THE), Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Center for World University Rankings (CWUR), US News & World Report Best Global Universities, and ARWU.
“UCT’s continued pursuit for excellence has seen the university continuing to rank among the top institutions in the world,” said UCT Vice-Chancellor Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng.
“We are proud to continue being in such a strong position, one we are working to harness for further impact on the continent and beyond.”
The ARWU annually ranks more than 1 800 universities across six key indicators and publishes the best 1 000.
“Although it is not usually accounted for in international university rankings, like this one, UCT strongly values its positive impact on society,” said Phakeng.
“And by placing transformation and sustainability at the core of our vision for the future, we are working to pursue these in parallel with excellence.”
This year, UCT regained the top score in the country in the ARWU highly cited researchers indicator, which contributes 20% of the total weighting, with three UCT researchers included in the list: Emeritus Professor William Bond, Professor Vicki Lambert and Professor Dan
Stein.
The list of Highly Cited Researchers, released annually by Clarivate Analytics, identifies researchers who have demonstrated significant influence through publication of multiple highly cited papers on the Web of Science during the past decade.
In addition to the highly cited researchers indicator, there are five other indicators used by ARWU: the number of alumni winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (10%), the number of staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20%), papers published in Nature and Science (20%), papers indexed in major citation indices (20%), and the per capita academic performance of an institution (10%).
In the Global Ranking of Academic Subjects held In May 2021, ShanghaiRanking placed UCT among the top 100 universities for five subject areas.
UCT performed best in environmental science and engineering, placing 23rd in the world.
This significant jump up from the previous year is as a result of a prestigious award in this research field that was conferred on a retired UCT staff member.
Another UCT subject ranked in the top 50 was oceanography, which maintained 48th position.
UCT’s mining and mineral engineering, and public health were both ranked between 51 and 75, and clinical medicine placed in the 76 to 100 range.
For its subject rankings, ShanghaiRanking lists more than 1 800 universities across 93 countries in 54 subjects. UCT was ranked in 21 of these subjects.
