SA varsities for the birds, fungi

IF a university degree involving the study of birds or fungi ranks high in your book‚ South Africa is not a bad place to be.

Three South African universities offer subjects in which they are among the best-performing teachers in the world. Two of these subjects are ornithology‚ the study of birds‚ and mycology‚ the branch of biology that deals with the study of fungi.

The Centre for World University Rankings (CWUR) has placed the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits)‚ the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of Pretoria (UP) in the top of its 2017 global subjects rankings.

Wits placed second in area studies‚ while UCT placed fourth. Area studies is an interdisciplinary field of research covering the resources concerned with the social‚ economic‚ political and military character of a geographical area.

Wits placed fifth for anthropology‚ alongside institutions like University College London‚ the University of Oxford‚ University of Cambridge‚ and Arizona State University.

UCT came in at third place for ornithology and the University of Pretoria second for mycology.

The CWUR Rankings by Subject ranks the world’s leading universities in 227 subjects covering all academic disciplines in the sciences and social sciences.

The ranking is based on the number of research articles universities have published in international top-tier journals using data from Clarivate Analytics.

There are more than 23 500 universities in the world.