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The University of Cape Town’s Development Studies has ranked tenth in the world, according to the tenth edition of the QS World University Rankings by Subject. The results sees Africa’s leading university feature in 34 of the 48 subject tables released today by QS.
Five other South African university departments achieve top-50 places, meaning that the nation accounts for all six of the African continent’s leading departments. The University of the Witwatersrand has risen from 13th to 12th for the study of Mining Engineering, while it ranks 19th for Development Studies (down one place).
Unlike last year’s edition of the rankings, South Africa’s Stellenbosch University features a top-50 program: its Development Studies department places 41st, rising from the 51-100 group. Another debutant, South Africa’s International Hotel School, makes its first appearance in QS’s Hospitality & Leisure Management table in 44th place.
In total, QS provide data on 135 programs at 18 universities in seven African nations. South Africa remains the continent’s dominant ecosystem, and this year’s edition of the tables indicate that little headway is being made by its continental peers: 126 of the 135 ranked programs can be found at South African universities, rendering it the most regionally-dominant higher education ecosystem in the world. However, the expansion of the rankings has enabled QS to provide performance data on a larger number of African programs.
The rankings, compiled by global higher education analysts QS Quacquarelli Symonds, provide authoritative comparative analysis on the performance of 13,138 individual university programs, taken by students at 1368 universities which can be found in 83 locations across the world, across 48 academic disciplines and five broad Faculty Areas.
• The expansion of the rankings sees a number of African programs debut in the tables. Ethiopia and Zimbabwe are featured in a QS ranking for the first time ever, with Addis
Ababa University and the University of Zimbabwe’s Medicine programs debuting in the 501-550 category;
• Two new Kenyan programs appear in the tables, both from the University of Nairobi: its Agriculture & Forestry department places in the 351-400 band, while its Medicine program ranks alongside Addis Ababa University and the University of Zimbabwe in the 501-550 band;
• Nigerian representation is offered by the University of Ibadan, placing in the 401-450 band;
• Uganda’s Makerere University – a well-established entrant into the QS tables – is ranked for three subjects, with its top department its Development Studies program (301-350).
Methodology
QS use four key metrics to compile the rankings. The precise weighting of each metric varies by subject to reflect differing publication cultures across disciplines. For example, research performance is deemed to be a stronger indicator of institutional strength in Medicine, where the discipline is highly reliant on dissemination of research, than it is in Performing Arts, where the discipline is more vocational in nature.
1. Academic Reputation – which institutions are most-highly regarded by the global academic community? The scores for this indicator are based on over 94,000 responses to QS’s Academic Survey – the world’s largest repository of global academic sentiment;
2. Employer Reputation – which institutions are regarded by the world’s hiring managers as nurturing the most talented, hireable graduates? The dataset for this indicator is derived from insights offered by over 44,000 hiring managers – the world’s largest repository of informed employer opinion about graduate strength;
3. Citations per Paper – which institutions are having the strongest impact on research in their field? This indicator accounts for the distribution of 162 million research citations deriving from 22.5 million research papers, indexed by Elsevier’s Scopus database. To account for divergences in institutional size, QS do not measure raw citation counts – which favours larger institutions – but divide the number of citations received on an institution’s research papers by the number of papers produced across a five-year window.
4. H-Index – how productive are an institution’s research faculty? The h-index is a way of measuring both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar. The index is based on the set of the academic’s most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications.
More methodological information can be found at https://www.TopUniversities.com/subject-rankings/methodology.
The full rankings can be found at https://www.TopUniversities.com/subject-rankings/2020.
link to the full results: www.TopUniversities.com/Subject-Rankings/2020 [1]
