International rankings

International rankings enhances the Department’s recognition on a global scale

The Department of Mining Engineering is particularly proud to belong to the top-rated School of Engineering in both South Africa and Africa. This is according to the Best Global Universities for Engineering in South Africa ranking of the US News and World Report.

These global rankings focus specifically on schools’ academic research and reputation overall, and enables prospective students to compare institutions around the world. The criteria that are considered include global and regional research reputation, publications, books and conferences, the normalised citation impact, as well as the total number of citations, and the number of publications that are among the top 10% of most-cited publications.

Improving its representation on international ranking systems is one of the key aspects that the Department is actively pursuing. These play a significant role in determining its relevance and contribution to the economy and society at large. They are used to evaluate overall performance and give a clear indication of a department’s status in the international context.

The QS World University Rankings, for example, is a ranking system made up of four major components: academic reputation, citations per paper, H-index citations and employer reputation. To improve the Department’s position in this prestigious subject ranking, it plans to elevate the Mining Footprint initiative of the MRRC. This is a strategic intervention to integrate research emanating from various faculties and departments at the University that is related in some way or other to mining. The purpose of this initiative is to contribute to solutions to complex mining problems, both locally and internationally.

The academic reputation of any department relates to the quality of its staff and related research experts’ contributions on a global scale. The improved perception of an employer’s reputation is also a key aspect of improved rankings. The Department’s leadership and employability initiatives are drivers of this goal, and it is actively exploring continuous improvement in this regard. Its internationalisation drive will also become a key aspect to elevate its international visibility. Another significant ranking system is the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) subject rankings. This system uses the following criteria to determine its overall ranking of academic institutions: quality of education, quality of faculty, research output and per capita academic performance of the institution. In 2019, UP was ranked in the top 100 universities for mining and mineral engineering in the world in the ARWU rankings, based on the Web of Science data.

The Department’s strategic focus for the future is to improve the position of UP’s mining research in the ARWU rankings by increasing its mining footprint at the University of Pretoria, thereby further enhancing its visibility, and to feature in the QS World University Rankings as well. At the time of publication, the updated ARWU ranking was not available.

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