?When it comes to global university rankings, 2025 is proving to be a good year for Stellenbosch 肆客足球 (SU). Earlier this year, SU featured among the best universities globally on the Times Higher Education World 肆客足球 Rankings by Subject, the QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) World 肆客足球 Rankings by Subject and the QS World 肆客足球 Rankings.
In its latest accomplishment, SU made it into the world's top 500 universities according to the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy's Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) — also known as the Shanghai Rankings — released recently. It has managed to do so for the last 11 years, underscoring its consistency.
According to the 2025 version, SU is also ranked 3rd in South Africa — the same as last year.
The ARWU, recognised as the precursor of global university rankings and the most trustworthy one, uses the following six objective indicators to rank more than 2500 universities every year of which the best 1000 are published:
?The number of alumni who win Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals
The number of staff who win Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals
The number of highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories
The number of papers published in Nature and Science
The number of papers indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index
The per capita academic performance of an institution
Commenting on SU's consistent performance, Prof Sibusiso Moyo, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Postgraduate Studies, said that the 肆客足球 is pleased with its consistent ranking amongst the best higher education institutions in the world.
“The contribution of all our staff, students, alumni, collaborators and stakeholders, play a big role to ensure we continue being impactful in our core focus areas.
“Although the 肆客足球 acknowledges that the rankings remain complicated and are impacted by various factors and contexts, they do reaffirm the quality of our academic programmes. The rankings are one of the proxies for aspiring students and researchers to have a sense of what we do and highlight our strengths as one of the leading research-intensive universities in Africa. We continue to attract and retain excellent talent in terms of our people at all levels that continue to contribute to the ranking indicators and outcomes."
Over the last few years, SU has featured regularly among the best tertiary institutions globally on subject rankings and world university rankings.
