UJ delighted with Brics recognition

JOHANNESBURG: The University of Johannesburg (UJ) has again been ranked among the top 100 universities in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Brics University Rankings for 2019.

Some 403 universities in the five Brics countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – were considered, up from 300 last year.

UJ vice-chancellor and principal, Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, said the institution had improved markedly across the board.

UJ held its fifth position among the 13 South African universities ranked, though it dipped three places to 61st overall ranking.

“This is testament to the effectiveness of the UJ strategy to increase its global standing. UJ also received a favourable rating in the employer reputation indicator (31st among Brics universities), while the university’s academic reputation rating is not far behind,” Marwala said.

“These two indicators highlight the international standard of UJ’s teaching and learning, and its outstanding reputation among academics and employers alike.”

An enlarged QS survey database, extremely high levels of competition and an increased pool of assessed Brics universities were among the factors that impacted the top South African universities.

Despite the three-place drop from last year’s rank of 58, UJ’s overall score increased due to higher scores for its global academic and employer reputation, internationalisation of academic staff and students, academic staff qualification levels, ratio of academic staff to students, as well as research productivity and impact.

“The university is delighted with this recognition and its performance in the context of a ranking system that is dominated by huge numbers of Chinese and Russian universities, and in which South Africa is the smallest player,” said Marwala.

“However, the ranking provides us with the opportunity to review our progress. I have no doubt that we can improve at a rate relative to the other Brics nations.” |