Wits scoops the top African university award
BRAAMFONTEIN – The enormous shift of resources away from research universities will ultimately compromise their national and systemic research capabilities says outgoing Wits vice-chancellor.
The University of the Witwatersrand has been ranked first in Africa in the 2020 Academic Ranking of World Universities.
Wits University was announced as the top African ranked university in the 2020 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) while also being placed in between the top 200 to 300 universities globally. Wits vice-chancellor and principal Professor Adam Habib celebrated how Wits University was viewed among the 25 000 universities in the world. He said, “This achievement is the result of Wits’ continuous effort to publish more high-quality research in international journals. Over the past seven years, Wits’ research output has more than doubled, thanks to the efforts of our world-class researchers, proactive research stewardship, and the efforts of our scholars and students.”
The ARWU adopts six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of articles published in the Journal of Nature and Science, the number of highly cited researchers and articles indexed in the Science Citation Index – Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index based on data in the Web of Science, and per capita performance. Wits vice-principal and vice-chancellor designate Professor Zeblon Vilakazi stated, “Our rising through the ranks would not be possible without our researchers who are fearless in their pursuit of new knowledge and innovation, are critical thinkers, problem-solvers, pioneers of science, and agents of change.”
Habib added that it is crucial for African countries, including South Africa, to develop and adequately support its own research-intensive universities. This will result in many institutions being able to continue conducting world-class research with local understanding and impact that addresses the transnational challenges of our time. He pointed out the enormous shift of resources away from such research universities which will ultimately compromise their national and systemic research capabilities. He said, “As a society, we should collectively commit, with the support of government and the private sector, to go beyond rhetorical support and proactively enable our research universities to produce the high-level skills and knowledge required to address our current problems, and the challenges of the 21st century, many of which are still unknown.”
