UI Retains Nigeria in 2018 World University Ranking, Reactions Across the World

UI’s International Conference Centre, a more modern face of the university

The University of Ibadan (UI) has retained Nigeria on the 2018 Times Higher Education, (THE) World University Rankings released earlier yesterday. It is the only Nigerian university on the list in which South Africa, Uganda, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya are featuring from Africa. Apart from South Africa which has six universities, (University of Cape Town, University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, University of Johannesburg, University of Pretoria, University of Western Cape and the University of South Africa), all the remaining African countries have one each. South Africa’s University of Cape Town is No. 171 on the list, well ahead of otherwise well regarded universities across the world.

Attitude or opinion vary on the idea of ranking universities on a world scale. Some people think very little of it,  especially when they look at the methodological issues involved and even the geopolitical critique, others think very highly of it. Whatever one’s opinion, ranking universities on a world scale is a rising industry, producing ripples that neither university administrators nor employers and even nations are prepared to ignore. It is a crowded hall in which no less than half a dozen different outfits are involved, each with slightly different ranking criteria and some releasing separate ranking for different regions. The Times Higher Education World University Ranking has its own prestige and attractions that must appeal to Africa. However, only a few African universities do get in there. Besides South Africa’s six, others includes the University of Makerere in Uganda, Cairo University in Egypt, the University of Ghana, UI and the University of Nairobi in Kenya. Nigeria’s sole university on the list came ahead of several universities in the UK, USA, Japan, East Europe, the Russian Federation, Brazil, Korea, Chile and China although its entries are very weak, with only a score of 1 % in terms of international students.

A striking part of the entry for UI has been that which says “Among the university’s alumni  are many notable individuals who have contributed significantly to the political, industrial, economic and cultural development of Nigeria, including the writer Wole Soyinka, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, and Chinua Achebe whose novel Things Fall Apart is the most widely read book in contemporary African literature”. This is significant in terms of how it connects UI with the established universities in the UK and the US who shared the first 25 positions on the list in the 2018 table as shown below:

University College London’s students at the Quad, the heart of the university

The first twenty five universities as shown above simply makes the list a relay between the UK and the US, with only one each from Switzerland, Canada and Singapore. In the case of the UK, not only are Oxford and Cambridge, the first two, their leading universities, even colleges within the University of London are strong enough to be in the same rank with full fledged universities. University College London, the London School of Economics and King’s College London are, theoretically, parts or colleges within the University of London Federation. Yet, they are on a list occupied by heavies such as Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Yale, Cornell and so on.

The 2018 ranking exercise has been attracting reactions across the world. The BBC led with Oxford and Cambridge being on top of the table, expressing anxiety with respect to what Brexit might do to income flow to the universities, that being one of the criteria upon which the ranking is based. It went on to list the other UK universities in the top 50: Imperial College London in the eighth place; University College London, 16th; London School of Economics and Political Science, 25th; University of Edinburgh, 27th and King’s College London, 36th. Rating UK universities for what it calls producing ground-breaking new research driving innovation as well as providing a world-class teaching environment, the BBC concluded that “They are a huge national asset, and one that the country can ill-afford to undermine at a time when its place in the global order is under intense scrutiny”.

The New Delhi Television (NDTV) in India took the same position but in regretting the bad news in the slippage of India’s leading schools such as the IIT, Delhi and IISc in Bangalore to lower band. Not only has India’s representation on the ranking declined from 31 institutions to 30, eight of its universities have slipped to a lower band, the NDTV reported, noting how “The country’s flagship university, the Indian Institute of Science, has been demoted from the 201-250 cohort to the 251-300 band as its research, income and citation impact have declined”, quoting a Times Higher Education Rankings official

THE quotes Professor Louise Richardson, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, as expressing delight that Oxford held its ground as the best university in the world for the second successive year, noting how it would be a source of pride for everyone at Oxford and the UK in the context of a world in which Britain’s role as well as the place of universities in society are all unclear. While there are those who would question the Oxford University VC’s use of the word ‘best’ instead of something like prestigious, few would find any fault with her attribution of Oxford’s rating to “a relentless pursuit of excellence, creative brilliance and a deep commitment to our enduring values”. Or her argument that “Success in our field is never an accident”. For Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, her counterpart at Cambridge University, the rating puts Cambridge “among a small group of the most respected higher education institutions globally”.

Although THE noted the presence of universities in India, Russia, Algeria and Nigeria on this year’s ranking but equally noted how they are among the institutions with the weakest citations scores in the table. It rated India one of the worst performers when it comes to internationalization, being a leading a leading developing country notwithstanding. In fact, it said the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have suffered in the overall standings of the World University Rankings partly because of an increased number of participants.

The prestigious Canadian university

The University of Cape Town in South Africa, Africa’s pride in ranking politics

Australia, Canada, Singapore have equally taken celebratory note of their performances. Some observers express surprise that any African countries even appeared on the list. None of the criteria favours them, be it income flow, citations, teaching, international outlook or staff-teacher ratio, among others. These criteria are such that hardly any university in Africa can get into the club of the top 100 no matter how well staffed or amount of research it produces. Research works in African universities are rarely cited, partly because the puzzles for research in Africa have little or no bearing on the research agenda in the West where the issues in question are about managing the postmodern world, not about how to escape from pre-industrial political economy. As the Western world have the largest concentration of research activities, from universities to specialised centres, think tanks, political parties, multinational corporations, faith based organisations, public relations and advertising firms, financial and related institutions, citation will hardly ever favour African scholars even in areas such as Ebola. Reading lists in Western academies are basically bare of references to African scholars, even prolific ones such as Claude Ake, Mamdani.

In other words, African countries are fundamentally disadvantaged in respect of references to research works produced in them in most of the disciplines. It is even worse in respect of income and in each of every of the criteria. Staff-student ratio would be the most laughable when a class in, say, a Nigerian university could be up to a thousand students. That is those called Dugbe Market class in campus parlance across Nigeria.

As if in anticipation of this ranking, Dr Deji Omole, an ASUU chieftain from the UI argued a few days ago for the federal government to use public funds to fund public education, conditioning cutting edge researches on such funding. He wondered why government is establishing new universities when it cannot fund existing ones before declaring flatly “What we are doing in the universities is a mockery of university education”

How the problem might be solved is the question. In Nigeria, the contending positions on how to go about it has brought about a standstill between the Federal Government and the academic staff of universities. It would seem that there is no separate solution for powerful universities independent of industrial transformation of Nigeria itself. One major problem is that even if the government provides the funding the academics are demanding, there is no guarantee that those who spend the money will use it in a way that can enable the universities enter global ranking. ASUU does not have control over how universities use available funds,