The universities were ranked based on their global reputation, research impact, staffing levels and international complexion. They were also scored according to their academic reputation, employer reputation, student-to-faculty ratio, citation per faculty, international faculty and international student ratio.
And just this week, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2015/2016 was released. Only the University of Ibadan was ranked among top 800 in the world.
While I would be the last person to pat Nigerian universities on the back for their seemingly poor outing, I still think people should be more realistic in assessing Nigeria’s performance in this international show.
I agree totally that Nigerian universities should be chided for coming behind both the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and the University of Nairobi, Kenya, established in 1970. But at the same time, before anyone goes to town to vilify our own, I think we should look at where most of the institutions on the world ranking are coming from. In terms of age, most of them are far older than Nigerian universities. The ones in Africa were established either in the 18th or early 19th century.
For instance, Al Azhar University, Egypt was founded in 972 AD, the University of Cape Town, in 1829, Cairo University, 1908, Stellenbosch University, 1903, Makerere University, Uganda, in 1922 and Rhodes University, in 1904. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s oldest university, the University of Ibadan, was established in 1948.
Of course, the University of Ghana, established same year with UI, was on the list, but this still does not remove the fact that the western world is not using a fair yardstick to measure many African universities.
Frankly speaking, I don’t see any justification using same criteria to assess Nigerian universities and Harvard, Cambridge or MIT. What is the basis for comparison? Are they in the same category? Agreed that Nigerian universities still have a very long way to go, but, I think it is both unrealistic and out of context to group them among these famous ivory towers.
Why should anyone place a university like MIT established in 1861 or Harvard founded in 1636 side by side with any Nigerian university? I don’t know how any ranking that lumps these very old universities with the relatively young ones will not always be skewed in favour of some universities in the world. Don’t forget also that the primary aim of these rankings is to help students make informed comparisons of leading universities around the world. In a situation like this, I doubt if any ranking body in the western world would ever promote or project any African university as one of the best destinations for tertiary education.
So, for me, the problem is not about Nigerian universities not being ranked among the first 700 in the world. Rather, my point of concern is that Nigerian universities do not seem to be on the right track. I wouldn’t have been bothered about any ranking if Nigerian universities were seen to be learning from the institutions ahead of them and working towards providing world class education for students.
But can we in all sincerity say that Nigerian universities have a vision of innovating and making scientific breakthroughs that can stand them out now? Are they truly engaged in research activities? Are they keeping pace with global development in curricula, teaching and in the way they are being managed? Are they aspiring to be reckoned with among the world’s best in the nearest future? Are they taking specific steps towards achieving their vision? In line with the globalisation of education, are they making moves to improve on their international complexion?
These are the issues. It doesn’t matter if no Nigerian university is on the so-called global ranking list as long as the answers to the posers above are positive. I won’t mind if our institutions are not given a space on the global ranking today once I am sure our universities are meticulous in fulfilling their functions of generating knowledge, transmitting same and applying it to provide solutions to societal problems.
Universities should impact positively on the society. They should be pre-occupied with what to do to make life more meaningful. They should be developing hypotheses, performing experiments, conducting studies and all sorts of researches just to make life better for everyone. Talk of ensuring advances in technology, breakthroughs in medicine, these should be the main pre-occupation of our eggheads.
But sadly, we are yet to reach this level. Many of our universities are not just on the right track. And if we continue at this rate, our public universities, especially, may never attain any tangible position in any credible global ranking.
Unfortunately, our problem is not just that our universities are not progressing; a lot of them are actually retrogressing. Funding, a major input for research and infrastructural development, is grossly lacking. Yet, our governments at both the federal and state levels feel comfortable playing politics with education. They want to provide free university education. But they don’t make provisions for research. They erroneously think that paying staff salaries is everything about tertiary education.
Meanwhile, research expenditures at MIT exceed $650m (N129.4bn) every year. Harvard runs a yearly budget of $4.2 bn (N836.6bn). And, in spite of their robust funding on research, these universities still charge tuition. Tuition and fees for 2015/2016 in MIT and Harvard are $46,704 [N10, 274,888] and $45,278 [N9, 961,160] respectively.
But, a country like Nigeria that does not vote money for research is reluctant to charge fees. Nigerians themselves don’t want to hear anything about tuition in universities. They think paying N90, 000 for hostel accommodation in some universities is tantamount to paying for university education. What a joke? How can Nigerian universities compete favourably with others in the world with this kind of outdated model?
Let’s face it. Nigerian universities are bound to retrogress if government funding continues to dwindle. Right now, infrastructural facilities are over-stretched, lecture halls are overcrowded and equipment in many of these institutions is outdated. Most budgets for education go into paying staff salaries.
Lecturers are not accessing the little research funds that are available through donor agencies because they don’t know how to write proposals, according to the National Universities Commission.
When the University of Ibadan got N3.25bn from the Federal Government for the construction and renovation of infrastructure in 2013, it was the highest intervention ever received in its history. No Nigerian public university can state how much it budgets for research yearly.
University education is not cheap. Nigerian governments are free to keep running a free tertiary education, but they should budget enough funds for the institutions. Both the federal and state governments should fund research activities and provide adequate infrastructure in their universities. They should also encourage companies to endow chairs and fund research activities.
Microsoft is one of the biggest companies funding robotic researches at the California State University in the United States. I also found out during my visit to the university that the institution’s alumni give back part of the money they make from their innovations to the university to keep it running.
It is high time Nigerian universities began to think of producing such productive and high calibre alumni, not half-baked or non-employable graduates.
http://www.punchng.com/columnists/frank-talk/beyond-qs-world-universities-ranking/
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