UJ best-performing in SA for faculty/student ratio

The University of Johannesburg (UJ) was noted by QS University Rankings: BRICS as the best-performing South African institution in the faculty ratio category.

The rankings that rate the top 400 universities of the five major emerging economies was released on 8 July 2015.

Ranked at position 67, and although four positions lower than in 2014, UJ has improved its overall score.

The ranking also sees UJ moving from sixth to fifth position in South Africa.

Significantly, an enlarged QS survey database, high levels of competition and an increased pool of BRICS universities assessed, are the factors that account for most of the top seven SA universities dropping three to four positions.

The ranking is based on eight performance indicators which include academic reputation, employer reputation, staff with a PhD, faculty/student ratio, citations per paper, and proportion of international faculty and students.

In terms of individual criteria, UJ was ranked eighth out of all BRICS universities for its proportion of international faculty and in the top 50 for its employer reputation and international students. It also achieved high ranking for its academic reputation and for the quality of its research as measured by the number of citations per research paper.

UJ Vice Chancellor Professor Ihron Rensburg said the ranking was a tremendous achievement

“This is a tremendous achievement in the context of a ranking system that is dominated by huge numbers of Chinese and Russian universities, and in which SA is the smallest player,” Prof Rensburg said in a media statement.

He also added, “Another important contextual factor is that the governments of Russia, China and Brazil are making significant investments in their leading universities in order to improve their rankings.”