Fort Hare joins ranks of world’s top universities

The University of Fort Hare has received a prestigious global accolade by one of the world’s most trusted university ranking agencies. 

Recently, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings published its annual report of the world’s top universities for 2023, listing 15 SA institutions among them. 

Only two Eastern Cape universities appeared on the rankings this year:  the University of Fort Hare (UFH) and Rhodes University. 

“We are excited by this achievement, and it marks an important moment in the first year of our renewal programme,” says UFH vice-chancellor and principal, Professor Sakhela Buhlungu. 

He says the university’s strategic plan is on track and that UFH is reclaiming ground. “Applications to UFH for the 2023 academic year also increased at an unprecedented rate.”

Since its inception in 2004, the Times Higher Education rankings has been assessing university performance to understand the success of higher education institutions around the world, providing trusted performance data on universities for academics, government and industry.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings is the only global performance table that judges research-intensive universities across all of their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook, and 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators are used.

The performance indicators are grouped into five areas: 

1. Teaching (the learning environment); 
2. Research (volume, income and reputation); 
3. Citations (research influence); 
4. International outlook (staff, students and research); and 
5. Industry income (knowledge transfer).

Earlier this year, UFH outranked several Eastern Cape universities based on the Scimago Institutions (SI) Rankings which rank various international academic and research-related institutions in terms of research, innovation and societal impact to finally produce a composite score.

In the overall ranking for SA higher education institutions — which considers research, societal impact and innovation — UFH was clustered in the second quartile.

Of the 23 SA higher education institutions ranked the university appeared in 12th position among these, followed by Nelson Mandela University in 15th place and Walter Sisulu University in the 19th position.  

Rhodes University was ranked in the 11th position and secured first place out of all the Eastern Cape universities. 

This article was paid for by the University of Fort Hare.