With 13 universities in the top 200 in the new aggregated ranking system known as ARTU, Australia ranks fourth in the world and is part of a rising new order in the global higher education sector.
It’s unlikely that student protests are directly affecting South African universities’ rankings. Instead, decades of government underfunding in higher education may be at least partly to blame.
It is arrogant and hypocritical for ranking institutions to declare that they’re building Africa’s legacy or its global partnerships on the continent’s behalf.