UCT top in Africa in latest world rankings

The University of Cape Town (UCT) has been ranked 226th in the world by the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2022. This position puts UCT among the top 18% of universities worldwide and is tied with Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (Germany), the University of Sussex (United Kingdom) and the University of Virginia (United States).

Despite a drop of six places compared with the previous year’s rankings, UCT remains the best university in Africa according to QS. This year, the company ranked 1 300 institutions around the world, including nine from South Africa.

QS uses six performance indicators to evaluate universities in its world rankings: academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per faculty member, faculty-to-student ratio, international staff ratio and international student ratio.

The academic reputation indicator remains UCT’s strongest performer. Based on a global survey of experts in higher education regarding the quality of universities’ teaching and research, it is the indicator that contributes the most (40%) to an institution’s overall score.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States leads the QS World University Rankings for the 10th consecutive time this year. It is followed by the University of Oxford (United Kingdom). Two universities tied in third: University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) and Stanford University (United States).

UCT’s development studies ranks 10th worldwide

UCT continues to perform well in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. In the latest iteration, released during March this year, UCT’s development studies was ranked 10th in the world and a further five subjects featured in the top 100. These were anthropology, archaeology, architecture / built environment, geography, and medicine. An additional 10 subjects ranked in the 101–150 range.

See the full QS World University Rankings 2022.

Read more about the methodology used by the QS World University Rankings.