UFH ranked among world's top 2,000 universities for 2024

The high quality of the education offered by the Eastern Cape's University of Fort Hare (UFH) has once again been confirmed by the release of the 2023/2024 University Ranking by the Academic Performance (URAP) World Rankings. 

The URAP World Rankings programme aims to rank international higher education institutions (HEIs) for their academic performance. 

According to the ranking body’s website, “URAP covers approximately 12% of all HEIs in the world, which makes it one of the most comprehensive university ranking systems.” 

UFH showed a remarkable ascent in the latest rankings, climbing 307 places. The university has ranked in 1,952nd position for the year 2023/2024, significantly up from its 2,259th position in 2022/2023.

The latest ranking sees UFH’s breaking through into the international league of the top 2,000 universities ranked by URAP for academic programme quality, along with 15 other South African universities. 

While none of the Eastern Cape universities featured in the ranking made the list of the top 10 institutions in the country, UFH's success has been particularly noteworthy when compared to other historically disadvantaged institutions (HDIs) in SA. 

Among the eight HDIs in the country, only six achieved a ranking from URAP. Out of these, UFH claimed the second position, right behind the University of the Western Cape, with Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University ranking third. 

UFH further impressed as the HDI recording the highest jump in rankings. As mentioned, UFH increased its ranking by 307 places; it was followed by Walter Sisulu University (163) and University of Venda (125).

The URAP World Rankings programme methodology involves scoring universities against several key performance indicators. 

Indicators include articles and documents to measure scientific productivity, citations to measure research impact, article and citation impact totals to measure research quality, and international collaboration to measure international acceptance. 

Since URAP is an academic performance-based ranking, publications constitute the basis of the ranking methodology. Both quality and quantity of publications and international research collaboration performance are used as indicators. 

“The URAP rankings empowers the UFH leadership team and the institution’s council with an independent assessment tool and alternative methodology to monitor, measure and assess the efficacy our strategic programmes and initiatives for the academic project, our research enterprises and international partnerships,” said Professor Sakhela Buhlungu, vice-chancellor and principal of UFH. 

“With another platform at our disposal for measuring research and academic performance, the university is further enabled to identify areas of strength and potential areas for improvement.”

This article was sponsored by the University of Fort Hare.