Posted by Sulaimon Olarenwaju, Lagos on
Nigerian universities were again rated low in the 2008 Academic Ranking of World Universities which was released on Friday as none of them made the top 500 list.
Nigerian universities were again rated low in the 2008 Academic Ranking of World Universities which was released on Friday as none of them made the top 500 list.
According to the ranking, which was published by Centre for World Class Universities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, no university in Africa is among the best 500 in the world.
The leading country in university education delivery, according to the centre, is the United States of America. Harvard University was ranked the best in the world, with a total score of 100 per cent. It is followed by Stanford University, also in the United States, with a score of 73.7 per cent; University of Massachussets was ranked fifth with a score of 69.6 per cent.
The weakest among the top 500 universities is the University of Zhongshan in China with a score of 13.1 per cent. The criteria for determining world class universities, according to the centre include: quality of education, quality of faculty, research output and per capita performance.
Shedding more light on the criteria, the centre said, 'We rank universities by several indicators of academic or research performance, including alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, articles published in Nature and Science, articles indexed in major citation indices, and the per capita academic performance of an institution.
'For each indicator, the highest scoring institution is assigned a score of 100, and other institutions are calculated as a percentage of the top score. The distribution of data for each indicator is examined for any significant distorting effect; standard statistical techniques are used to adjust the indicator if necessary.
'Scores for each indicator are weighted to arrive at a final overall score for an institution. The highest scoring institution is assigned a score of 100, and other institutions are calculated as a percentage of the top score. An institution's rank reflects the number of institutions that sit above it.'
Commenting on the ranking, Professor Isaac Adeyemi, Vice Chancellor, Bells University, Ota, said there was no Nigerian university on the top 500 list because the assessors did not have access to information about the Nigerian universities.
According to him, 'Most of the information used in assessing universities were sourced on the website of these universities but many Nigerian universities do not have reliable websites. This is why the National Universities Commission is considering compelling Nigerian universities to have good websites. I am sure very soon, the poor ranking of Nigerian universities will become a thing of the past because nearly all the universities are trying to improve on the quality of their websites. '
He also called on university academic staff to make available to university authorities the result of their research findings so that these could be posted on websites so that those assessing university performances can have access to them.