Nigerian varsities fail global ranking, again

Nigeria performed poorly in the latest global ranking of universities, with none of its ivory towers making the world’s top 1,000 universities. The United States alone has eight universities in the top 10, with Harvard University ranking first as the world’s best higher institution. It is followed by Stanford University in the second position and […]

Nigeria performed poorly in the latest global ranking of universities, with none of its ivory towers making the world’s top 1,000 universities. The United States alone has eight universities in the top 10, with Harvard University ranking first as the world’s best higher institution. It is followed by Stanford University in the second position and Massachusetts Institute of Technology coming third. While Cambridge and oxford universities in the United Kingdom ranked 4th and 5th, universities of Columbia, California, Chicago, Princeton, and Cornell University all in the US, came 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th in the ranking.
The 2015 ranking by the Centre for World University Ranking (CWUR), shows that only five universities in Africa made the top 1,000 best institutions in the world. While three of the five are universities in Africa, the remaining two are in Egypt. The highest ranked university in Africa is the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. The second and third best universities in Africa are also South African, the University of Cape Town, which ranked 248th and the Stellenbosch University which ranked 306th. The fourth and fifth best African institutions are in Egypt, the Cairo University and the Alexandria University, which respectively ranked 796th and 997th.
In an earlier ranking done by Journals Consortium, only one Nigerian university made it to the list of top 10 African universities.  University of Ibadan is listed at a distant 8th, behind South African institutions, the Cairo University in Egypt as well as the University of Nairobi in Kenya. While the University of Cape Town came first in the recent list of 100 best universities released by Journals Consortium; Cairo University, the University of Pretoria and the University of Nairobi respectively came second, third and fourth. The University of South Africa, the University of Witwatersrand, Stellenbosch University, the University of Ibadan, the University of Kazulu Natal, and Ain Shams University were ranked 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th.
Parameters used for ranking universities at global and regional scale include the quality of education as well as the state of teaching and learning facilities at the institution. The CWUR, for instance, uses eight objective indicators to rank the world’s top 1,000 universities. They are: (1) Quality of education measured by the number of university’s alumni who have won major international awards, prizes and medals and prizes; (2) Alumni employment measured by the number of the university’s alumni who have held CEO positions at the world’s top companies relative to the university’s size; (3) quality of faculty measured by the number of academics who have won major international awards and prizes; (4) Publications measured by the number of research papers appearing in reputable journals; (5) Influence measured by the number of research papers appearing in highly influential journals; (6) Citations measured by the number of highly cited research papers; (7) Broad impact measured by university’s h-index; and (8) Patent measured by the number of international patent filings.
South Africa and Egypt have fewer universities than Nigeria, where there are over 100 public and private universities. There are less than 20 universities in each of South Africa and Egypt. While the foremost position of universities in South Africa and Egypt are true reflections of their economic relevance in the African continent, Nigeria’s backward position in higher education at global and continental levels evidently speak for the country’s chaotic education system; a discredit to the African continent which sees Nigeria as its pride in nearly all forms of human endeavour.
The current ranking suggests that the overall performance of higher institutions is not determined by their number, and that a situation in which some private universities are ranked higher than public institutions says a lot of the lip-service paid by government over the years to education in Nigeria.
The dwindling fortunes of Nigeria in the global ranking of higher institutions expose how the country has failed, in its education system, to lead the continent.  Numbers can be misleading. The carrying capacity in Egypt for undergraduates, for instance, could be wider, even though with fewer institutions than Nigeria’s, which can admit less than 800,000 undergraduates with higher number of universities.
Real and sustained investment in expanding the absorptive capacity of universities and improving the quality of teaching, not hand-wringing and lamentation, will halt the slide to enable Nigeria regain its competitive edge again.