Stellenbosch University (SU) continues to hold its own in a fast-changing and competitive global higher education landscape. In its most recent achievement, SU features amongst the best universities in the world in the latest Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, released on Thursday 9 October 2025.

In the 2026 edition, SU is ranked in the top 350 tertiary institutions in the world (for the third consecutive year) and second in South Africa (for the fifth consecutive year). It shares second place with the University of the Witwatersrand.

As the world’s most influential university ranking, the THE World University Rankings are the only global performance tables that judge research-intensive universities across all their core missions: teaching (the learning environment); research environment (research reputation, research income and research productivity); research quality (citation impact, research excellence and research strength); international outlook (international staff and students, international co-authorship); and industry (industry income and patents).

Commenting on SU’s latest accomplishment, Prof Sibusiso Moyo, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Postgraduate Studies, said that the University is pleased with its consistent ranking among the best institutions of higher education in the world – and with improving on its overall score for this ranking.

“We are on record in stating that although the rankings remain complicated and impacted by various factors and contexts, it does reaffirm the quality of our academic programmes and is a testimony to the continuous, high-level contribution of our researchers to the global scientific pool of knowledge. 

“The rankings remain a proxy for aspiring students and researchers to have a sense of what we do and highlight our strengths as a leading research-intensive university that also remains one of the most innovative universities in Africa. We receive requests from other institutions to benchmark best practices. In addition, 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. Tied with improving in the categories of teaching, research environment, research quality and industry it shows that we are indeed progressing in achieving our vision to be Africa's leading research-intensive university.”

Indicators

Stellenbosch University improved on its overall score (from 51,3 to 52,8) as well as on the score for the indicators teaching (31,2 to 34,8), research environment (from 40,1 to 40,8), research quality (from 74,6 to 75,5), and industry (from 89,5 to 91,8). When comparing year-on-year improvements, teaching performed the best of all the indicators. In terms of global position, SU’s best-performing indicator was industry, with a ranking of 191. It also achieved the highest score for this indicator in South Africa.

According to the THE WUR, the industry indicator is a university’s ability to help industry with innovations, inventions and consultancy and this has become a core mission of the contemporary global academy. It seeks to capture such knowledge-transfer activity by looking at how much research income an institution earns from industry (adjusted for PPP), scaled against the number of academic staff it employs. The indicator suggests the extent to which businesses are willing to pay for research and a university’s ability to attract funding in the commercial marketplace – useful indicators of institutional quality.

The teaching indicator is underpinned by the annually run Academic Reputation Survey that examines the perceived prestige of institutions in teaching and research. As well as giving a sense of how committed an institution is to nurture the next generation of academics, a high proportion of postgraduate research students also suggests the provision of teaching at the highest level that is thus attractive to graduates and effective at developing them.

Earlier in 2025, SU also featured among the top universities globally on the THE World University Rankings by Subject, the QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) World University Rankings by Subject and the QS World University Rankings. Over the last few years, SU has been consistently ranked among the best tertiary institutions in the world on these rankings.