Newsnow: top 1000 universities in the world Nigeria no where to be found

Nigerian universities failed to secure a place in the 2016 edition of the Centre for World University Rankings (CWUR) released on Monday.

The CWUR publishes the only global university ranking that measures the quality of education and training of students as well as the prestige of the faculty members and the quality of their research without relying on surveys and university data submissions.

In addition to providing authoritative global university rankings, CWUR provides consulting services to governments and educational institutions who aspire to achieve world-class standards.

The CWUR ranking started out as a project in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 2012 with the modest aim of ranking the top 100 global universities.

The ranking was quickly reported worldwide and many requests were received to expand it. Since 2014, the CWUR ranking expanded to list the top 1,000 out of 25,000+ institutions of higher education worldwide, making it the largest academic ranking of global universities.

The ranking are based on eight broad criteria on which the institutions are rated. These are Quality of Education, measured by the number of a university’s alumni who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals relative to the university’s size (25%); Alumni Employment, measured by the number of a university’s alumni who have held CEO positions at the world’s top companies relative to the university’s size (25%); Quality of Faculty, measured by the number of academics who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals (25%) and, Publications, measured by the number of research papers appearing in reputable journals (5%).

Others are Influence, measured by the number of research papers appearing in highly-influential journals (5%); Citations, measured by the number of highly-cited research papers (5%); Broad Impact, measured by the university’s h-index (5%) and Patents, measured by the number of international patent filings (5%).

In the new rankings, the United States maintained the top position with 224 of its universities making the list of world’s top 1,000 institutions.

Of the top 10 universities listed in the rankings, the U.S. took eight slots while the United Kingdom took two.

The top 10 universities in order of ranking are Harvard University, U.S. with a score of 100/100; Stanford University, U.S., 98.25; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) U.S., 97.12; University of Cambridge UK, (96.13); University of Oxford, UK, 95.39; Columbia University, U.S., 4.12; University of California, Berkeley, U.S., 91.35; University of Chicago, U.S., 90.72; Princeton University, U.S., 88.72; and Yale University, U.S. 85.83.

The top 10 universities in the U.S. according to the rankings are Harvard University, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago, Princeton University, Yale University, California Institute of Technology and Cornell University.

The U.K’s top 10 are University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University College London, Imperial College London, University of Edinburgh, University of Manchester, King’s College London, University of Glasgow, University of Nottingham and University of Southampton.

Only two African countries had their universities in the list. They are South Africa, which has five universities in the list and Egypt with four universities.

Overall, the U.S. had the U.S has a total number of 224 universities among the top 1,000, followed by China, with 90. Japan has 74, while the United Kingdom has 65.

Others are Germany, 56; France, 48; Italy, 48; Spain, 41; South Korea, 36; Canada, 32; Australia, 27.In Africa, only universities in South Africa and Egypt made the list.

South Africa has five, while Egypt has four.

For South Africa, the five universities and their rankings, according to the CWUR, are University of Witwatersrand, which came in at 176th position; University of Cape Town, 265th; Stellenbosch University, 329th; University of KwaZulu-Natal, 468th; and the University of Pretoria, 697th.

The four from Egypt are Cairo University at 771st position; Ain Shams University, 960th; Mansoura University, 985th; and Alexandria University, 995th.

Nigerian universities failed to make the 2016 list. Harvard has remained on number one since 2012. In 2012, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cambridge, Caltech, Princeton, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, and Berkeley were at the top of the list.

In 2013, the top universities were Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, MIT, Cambridge, Columbia, Berkeley, Princeton, Chicago, and Yale.

In 2014, the top ten were Harvard, Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Oxford, Columbia, Berkeley, Chicago, Princeton, and Yale.

In 2015, Harvard also scored 100 to be at the top, while Stanford placed second with 98.66, MIT had came in third with 97.54 and Cambridge was in fourth place with 96.81. Oxford came fifth with 96.4, Columbia sixth with 96.14, Berkeley, seventh with 92.2; Chicago was eighth with 90.70; Princeton ninth with 89.42, and Cornell 10th with 10, 86.79.

Falling standards of education in Nigeria is an issue that has attracted the attention of stakeholders.

In fact, the CWUR is not the first time Nigerian universities have been rated poorly.

In a similar ranking by Times Higher Education (THE) rankings in 2016, only one Nigerian university made the list of 14 top universities in Africa at a distant 14th place.

Times Higher Education World University Rankings was founded in 2004 to provide the definitive list of the world’s best universities, evaluated across teaching, research, international outlook, reputation and more.

In the report released in April this year, South Africa occupied the top three slots with University of Cape Town at the very top, followed by University of the Witwatersrand and Stellenbosch University.

Uganda’s Makerere University was rated fourth, while University of KwaZulu-Natal came in fifth and South Africa taking the sixth position again with University of Pretoria. University of Ghana placed seventh, University of Nairobi, Kenya seventh, Suez Canal University Egypt, ninth; Alexandria University Egypt, 10th; Cairo University Egypt, 11th; University of Marrakech Cadi Ayyad, Morocco 12th; University of South Africa, South Africa, 13th, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, 14th and Mohammed V University of Rabat, Morocco in the 15th place.Prof. Oyesoji Aremu of the Institute for Peace and Strategic Studies, University of Ibadan regretted that while some traditionally high impact universities like Cambridge, Oxford and MIT continue to dominate the top spot, universities in Nigeria are not ranked in the top 1000th globally.

He attributed the poor ratings of Nigeria universities to poor funding, low infrastructure among other things.

“As a result of poor funding, Nigerian universities cannot attract foreign academics that would have helped shore up their global rating,” he stated.

Similarly, unlike universities in America and the United Kingdom, Nigeria universities cannot also attract foreign students that would have promoted cross boarder learning. In that light, teaching and research works are minimally impacted globally,” he said.