Publishing Date: 11/17/2014 12:00 AM

​​The University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) strategy to increase its global excellence and academic robustness has once again been borne out with UJ climbing 80 places globally and being ranked 8th in Africa and 6th in South Africa by the University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) ranking system for 2014 – 2015.

The URAP ranking system ranks the top 2000 Higher Education Institutions globally on academic performance and excellence in research, focusing on research output, citations, impact and international collaboration.

UJ has progressively climbed the URAP ranking since 2010 when it was ranked 1183 in comparison to its current global ranking of 704. This constitutes an impressive climb of 479 places in just four years.

Says Prof Ihron Rensburg, Vice Chancellor and Principal of UJ, “Our URAP ranking of 8th in Africa, coming shortly after our September Top 4% ranking by the leading QS World University Rankings, confirm that our strategic focus on accessible global excellence and stature is bearing fruit, a continuing focus of UJ over the next decade. This latest URAP ranking also confirms UJ’s evolution into a Pan-African epicentre of critical intellectual enquiry and scholarship.”

Earlier in 2014 the QS Subject Rankings also affirmed UJ’s international academic stature when it ranked five of UJ’s subject areas amongst the elite top 200 universities globally, namely Education, Law, English Language and Literature, Politics and International Studies, and Geography.