UCT has been ranked among the top 100 universities in the world for eight of its subject areas, according to the QS World University Rankings by Subject released on 8 May. UCT was ranked at 32 for its Education and Training subject area. The other seven subject areas are: Earth and Marine Sciences, Politics, Psychology, Law and Legal Studies, History and Archaeology, Geography, and English Language and Literature.

Regarded as one of Africa's leading universities, UCT's consistent performance in world ranking systems speaks to the university's commitment to quality research as well as first-rate higher education.

This year UCT features in 19 of the 30 subject areas measured by QS, which ranks the world's top 200 higher education institutions. Three of UCT's subject areas - Agriculture, Civil Engineering and Politics - have also been rated for the first time. For the third edition of the QS World University Rankings by Subject, 2 858 universities have been evaluated, and 678 institutions ranked in total.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Danie Visser said: "The different world rankings of universities each measure different aspects of universities' performance. The methodology of the QS survey relies heavily on a global survey of what academics and employers think of a particular university (50%). One would expect that a university in the global South would not do particularly well in such surveys, since most of the respondents are probably from northern countries. It is therefore most pleasing that UCT's work has registered sufficiently internationally to be placed in the top 100 in no fewer than eight different areas, and in the top 200 in 19 areas."

The surveys are complemented by three other measures: the citations per faculty, as indicated by SciVerse Scopus (20%), the staff-student ratio (20%), and the degree of internationalisation, measured by the proportion of international students (5%) and the proportion of international faculty (5%). "Since UCT's research impact is above the world average in many areas, and because we have a very good proportion of international students, these indicators would tend to boost our scores," added Visser. "As always, we are mindful that this is just one view of the cathedral, but we are very pleased about this renewed confirmation of the value of our work."

(For more information on the QS World University Rankings by Subject, please visit Top Universities or QS Intelligence Unit)