UCT’s Law Faculty continues to grow from strength to strength.  The smallest of six Faculties at the University of Cape Town, the Law Faculty has just been ranked at 77^th in the world in the THE World University Rankings.  This is an enormous indicator of the Faculty’s excellence – as one of three UCT subject areas (along with social sciences and education) ranked in the THE’s top 100 globally.

The Faculty has a long history of excellence in law education and research, consistently producing the most sought-after LLB graduates, and being the UCT Faculty with the highest graduate employment rate (ie. employed within a year of graduating).  This latest accolade, while affording the Faculty and UCT great recognition of levels of excellence according to the THE ranking assessment criteria, does not mean that the Faculty intends to rest on its laurels.

UCT Law was recently provided with an excellent opportunity to assess where it needed to improve, through the South African Council on Higher Education (CHE) national LLB review process.  This process resulted in the development of a comprehensive improvement plan which focused on, amongst other things, including transformative constitutionalism more fully into the LLB Curriculum; addressing low throughput rates in the LLB programme; and ensuring solid co-ordination across LLB courses. 

Some may be wondering how the latest THE World University Rankings for Law schools matches with UCT Law being put on notice of withdrawal (November 2017) of its LLB accreditation by the CHE.  While some sought to argue that this “notice of withdrawal” by the CHE (ie. that the Faculty needed to address a few key issues in its Improvement Plan submission, failing which we would have our accreditation withdrawn) was a reflection on the quality of UCT’s LLB degree programme, this argument is clearly incorrect.  UCT's LLB accreditation was fully re-instated by the CHE in June 2018, on receipt of the Faculty's full and in-depth improvement plan report.

The rigorous assessment conducted by the THE, placing UCT Law 77^th in the world, serves best to demonstrate the extent to which UCT Law continues to offer excellent legal education.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2019 includes more than 1,250 universities, making it the THE's "biggest international league table to date" (source: http://bit.ly/2PgxzPV)  – and it is the first time that UCT Law has been ranked in the top 100 Law schools globally.

Importantly, the THE Ranking is the only global university performance table to judge research-intensive universities across all of their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. THE uses 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons, trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments.* (sourced from http://bit.ly/2PgxzPV)

The calculation of the rankings for 2019 has been audited by professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), making these the only global university rankings to be subjected to full, independent scrutiny of this nature.

For more information on the THE ranking methodology, go to https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/methodology-world-university-rankings-2019 or watch the explainer video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=vcLqU49_Dd8