Top 800 global varsities: UG Ghana's sole rep

University of Ghana is the only Ghanaian university that was ranked in the top 800 universities in the world, according to Times Higher Education World University Ranking for 2015/2016 released this week.

An analysis of the report showed that UG, Legon was ranked 601st of the world’s top 800 universities featured in the survey, 200 steps lower than Uganda's Makerere University, which is ranked 401st.

South Africa's University of Cape Town, ranked 120th to clinch the highest ranked university in Africa.

Five other South African universities capped a strong showing for the 'Rainbow nations' tertiary education which had the highest number of Universities making the list from a single African country.

They are University of Witwatersrand (201st); Stellenbosch University (301st); University of KwaZulu-Natal (401st); University of Pretoria (501st); and University of South Africa (601st).

Next to South Africa, three Egyptian universities, Alexandria University, Cairo University, and Suez Canal University are all ranked 601st on the list.

Uganda's Makerere University ranked (401st) whiles University of Ghana was joined in Africa's Top 800 universities 'singles category' with Nigeria's University of Ibadan, Morocco's University of Marrakech Cadi Ayyad all ranking within the 601st bracket.

In total, 13 universities from six African countries are included among the top 800 universities in the world.

The California Institute of Technology, United States, occupies the number one spot in the world.

The University of Oxford, United Kingdom is on the 2nd position, while Stanford University, United States and University of Cambridge, United Kingdom are on the 3rd and 4th positions respectively.

Other top ranked institutions are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States (5th); Harvard University, United States (6th); Princeton University, United States (7th); Imperial College London, United Kingdom (8th); ETH Zurich-Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland (9th); and University of Chicago, United States (10th).

According to its website, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, assesses the best global universities across all of their core missions – teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

The survey employs “13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons, trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and even governments”.

The performance indicators are grouped into five areas: Teaching (the learning environment), Research (volume, income and reputation), Citations (research influence), International outlook (staff, students and research) and Industry income (knowledge transfer).