UJ subjects recognised globally, five ranked first in South Africa

Date: Jul 3, 2020 | College of Business and Economics, Faculties, News

​The University of Johannesburg (UJ) welcomes ShanghaiRanking’s latest 2020 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) released on Monday, 29 June 2020, in which it once again achieved excellent results with 9 of its subjects ranked in the global top 500, and five of which are ranked number one in South Africa.

These rankings highlight the world’s top universities and provide comparative analyses on the performance of universities across 54 subjects and five broad subject fields: natural sciences, engineering, life sciences, medical sciences, and social sciences.

Most notably, UJ’s School of Tourism and Hospitality (STH) in the College of Business and Economics (CBE), in which the GRAS Hospitality & Tourism Management subject resides, is ranked 20^th in the world, and remains uncontested in the top number one spot in South Africa and on the African continent.

UJ’s five subjects ranked first in the country are: Hospitality & Tourism Management (20), Sociology (101-150), Education (201-300), Chemical Engineering (201-300), and Political Sciences (201-300).

The full list of UJ’s subjects ranked in the global top 500 includes:

Over 4 000 universities globally were evaluated and ranked in total. More than 1 800 universities from 90 countries and regions are published in this release. The 2020 subject rankings methodology is based on five research-related rankings indicators: the number of papers published in Q1 (first quartile) journals by Journal Impact Factor (JIF) during the five-year period 2014-2018, citation impact, papers in top journals and conferences, international collaboration, and academic recognitions and awards.

The GRAS 2020 results follow UJ’s recent strong and commanding performance in the latest QS World University Rankings, QS Under 50 Rankings and the Times Higher Education (THE) Young University Rankings, released in June of this year.

See the full ShanghaiRanking’s GRAS 2020 list here.

The ShanghaiRanking Consultancy has been publishing the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) by academic subjects – GRAS – since 2009 and is considered one of the leading international league tables. Given the fact that this is the fourth time that UJ is evaluated at subject level, this achievement is remarkable and reaffirms the international stature and standing of UJ’s offerings particularly in these subject areas.

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