The Center for World Universities Ranking (CWUR) has explained why Nigerian universities were not considered in their Top 1000 global ranking.
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The rankings did not rely on opinion-based surveys, but took a quantitative approach that looked at several factors.
The world ranking started in 2012 with the top 100 global universities, but requests to expand it brought a change in 2014. Wits dropped from 149th in 2015 to 176 in 2016. Wits, UCT, and Stellenbosch all dropped significantly on 2015’s performance. University rankings are often treated with a pinch of salt, varying widely in terms of methodology.
Other criteria used to compile the rankings were publications, the number of research papers appearing in reputable journals; influence, or the number of research papers appearing in highly-influential journals; citations, the number of highly-cited research papers; broad impact, which measures productivity and impact of published work; and patents, the number of global patent filings. University of KwaZulu-Natal was ranked fourth in SA but 467th in the world, while the University of Pretoria was fifth in SA but 697th in the world.
The quality of education indicator, for example, measures the weighted number of an institution’s alumni who have won major awards, medals and prizes relative to the institution’s size.
U.S. universities took all three top spots.
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Harvard was ranked first in the world and Stanford second, with MIT third – all in the US. “Our focus as a higher education institution should be on building a nationally responsive and globally competitive institution, focusing on academic and research excellence that is both demographically diverse and cosmopolitan”, Habib said.
