The University of KwaZulu-Natal has ranked in the top 2.5% in the 2022-23 edition of the Global 2000 list by the Center for World University Rankings.
This means that UKZN is placed 484 out of 19,788 universities worldwide. The Education Ranking is at 497. The Employability Ranking is 361, and the Research Ranking is 475. The rankings place UKZN in the 4th spot in Africa and also 4th in South Africa. The University has an overall score of 74.3.
The rankings take into consideration good governance, academic talent management, research productivity and quality programmes as well as the high calibre of staff and students and their contributions to the University's placement in the top 500 of the world's leading universities.
UKZN’s Executive Director of Corporate Relations, Normah Zondo, said UKZN’s ranking in the top 2.5% of the world’s universities enhances the image, brand and reputation of the University.
Zondo said this augurs well for UKZN as students, academics, alumni, funders and global partners want to be associated with high-performing universities with high rankings.
She explained that rankings are an independent tool for monitoring performance.
"They focus on the core functions of universities which include: research, teaching, meaningful community engagement and internationalisation. They assist institutions in measuring their performance and thus for self-monitoring and self-improvement while also fostering healthy competition and best practice among universities," Zondo said.
The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) publishes the largest academic rankings of global universities.
The rankings are unique in that objective indicators are used for all four key pillars underlying the methodology of the ranking (education, employability, faculty, and research) with no reliance on surveys and university data submissions.
There is also equal emphasis on student-related and faculty-related indicators and 19,788 universities are ranked according to their academic performance.
IOL