University of Cape Town leads the SA charge up global rankings

SOUTH African universities are rising up the global rankings, with the University of Cape Town leading the way.

For the very first time, South Africa has three universities in the top 300 World University Rankings for 2014-15, which were released last night.

UCT moved up two places to 124 and Stellenbosch moved into the top 300 for the first time, while Wits dropped a few spots.

No other African university ranks in the top 300, but Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakesh, Morocco, is listed in the 301- 350 bracket. It was not ranked last year. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings system is one of the three biggest global academic reputation surveys. This year's data was collected from about 10000 academics.

Rankings below 200 are not individually listed, but rather grouped into clusters. Stellenbosch moved up from the 301- 350 grouping last year to the 276-300 grouping this year, while Wits dropped from the 226-250 group to the 251-275 group.

The top global university is the California Institute of Technology for the fourth consecutive year, followed by Harvard, Oxford, Stanford and Cambridge. - Jerome Cornelius and Reitumestse Pitso