[imagesource:here]

For the past decade, the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand have been considered the top universities in South Africa, regularly leading local rankings in global lists.

However, even though these institutions are still ahead of others in South Africa, their rankings haven’t improved much and have even slipped a bit.

Meanwhile, a few other local universities have made significant jumps up the rankings in recent times.

Take for example the University of Johannesburg, which now features among the top five universities in the latest QS World University Rankings for 2025. UJ is also noted as the biggest climber among all locally ranked institutes in the Centre for World University Rankings list for 2024, having climbed a massive 327 places.

Stellenbosch University is now seen as the third-best university in South Africa, just behind UCT and Wits. This is a big jump for them, as they overtook the University of KwaZulu Natal for this spot over the past decade.

Our lower-ranked universities have also seen some major shifts, with the University of South Africa (Unisa) managing to be one of the biggest climbers, globally, despite all its controversies.

Meanwhile, North-West University (Potch) and the University of the Free State have also shaken things up in the world of higher education.

The latest global ranking from QSWUR just came out, listing 11 South African universities among the world’s best, with six in the top 1000. This ranking emphasises research and employability, and lately, it’s been paying more attention to sustainability as well.

BusinessTech‘s table shows how South Africa’s universities performed in global rankings over the last decade:

Image: BusinessTech

The Centre of World University rankings for 2024 was published in May, ranking 13 South African universities among the top 100. The CWUR grades universities without relying on surveys and university data submissions, and focuses on education, employability, faculty, and research.

It showed that our top universities – UCT, Wits, Stellenbosch and UKZN – all dropped down the rankings over the past decade, while the likes of UJ, NWU and UFS climbed, sometimes even quite dramatically.

Other major university rankings, including the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), University Ranking of Academic Performance (URAP) or the Times Higher Education (THE) Rankings have not yet been updated for 2024/25. But their past data shows similar patterns.

[source:businesstech]