This week, Tuesday 5 September 2017, saw the release of the latest 2018 edition of the highly regarded Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings. UJ has, in its second showing in this ranking, retained its global spot in the 601-800 rank band and remains firm at fifth position in South Africa. Times Higher Education (THE) evaluates universities on 13 performance metrics grouped into the five broad categories of Teaching, Research, Citations, International Outlook, and Industry Income. THE rankings are regarded as one of the most authoritative rankings of universities worldwide, along with the QS rankings.

UJ tremendously improved on last year’s scores in all five categories, most notably in Citations with an increase of 12.8 points which translates into a remarkable 54.5% improvement. For Research, UJ saw an increase of 5.1 points, which is a 27.7% improvement. Of the eight SA universities that have been ranked by THE, only three improved on the positions they achieved last year and five dropped. UJ was amongst the three that made positive gains, and in fact moved up faster (by 87 places) than any of the others. This result demonstrates, once again, that UJ is asserting its well-earned place among top research counterparts.