North-West University shines in QS World University Rankings

The North-West University (NWU) continues to feature in international rankings. The latest Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject includes the NWU in two subject areas: agriculture and forestry, and medicine.

The 2023 QS World University Rankings by Subject ranked the NWU in the 351 to 400 category for agriculture and forestry and in the 551 to 600 category for medicine. This is the first year that the NWU has featured in the ranking table for agriculture and forestry.

QS published the rankings on 22 March. They included 1 594 institutions in 161 locations, ranked across 54 subjects in five broad subject areas.

They used five indicators to determine a place in the rankings table. These included academic reputation; employer reputation; citations per paper; the h-index (measuring the stability of the impact and quality of the work published by the institutions’ scientists and scholars); and the International Research Network (IRN) (measuring the efficiency of establishing stable research collaborations in all the broad subject areas).

This is not the first time the NWU has featured in QS rankings. Globally, the NWU was ranked in the 1 001 to 1 200 category in June last year for the 2022/2023 QS World University Rankings. This placed the NWU among the top eight South African universities. The NWU’s performance has been consistent in this ranking category for the past four years.