It is not a surprise that national, regional and global private organisations release ranking reports about higher educational institutions every year. It is a tradition that has been nurtured and cherished by stakeholders in the education industry over the years. In Nigeria, mixed reactions usually trailed the release of the reports. For instance, people always discuss the place of the Nigerian universities in relation with others in Africa, especially South African universities that were ranked ahead of first and second generation universities.
This piece is not out to explicate the outcomes of the discourse. It aims at bringing surprising insights about the recently released rankings of 277 higher institutions in Nigeria. In its analysis of Higher Education Institutions, Webometrics considered 170 southern and 107 northern based HEIs. Examination of the ranking shows that University of Ibadan and Covenant University occupy first and second position respectively in Nigeria. Our analyst notes that having these universities in the top 10 spot is not surprising because they have maintained the top 10 spot over the years.
Webometrics uses impact, openness and excellence as core indicators for positioning each institution. According to the organisation, impact signifies the number of external networks (subnets) linking to the institution’s webpages (normalized and then the maximum value is chosen). This indicator takes 50% of the total 100%. Openness as an indicator means an examination of the academic publication performance of faculty members.
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To measure this, Webometrics leverages Google Scholar profile of the faculty members with the specific reference to the number of citations from top 210 authors (excl. top 20 outliers). This indicator gulps 10% of the total expected 100%. Excellence, the third indicator, resembles openness indicator. It is, however, differed with the consideration of “Top cited papers; number of papers amongst the top 10% most cited in each one of the disciplines in an institution.” Publications of institutions between 2015 and 2019 were considered and the indicator is allotted 40% of the expected 100%.
Beyond having University of Ibadan and Covenant University among the universities that ranked well nationally and globally, our analyst carried out a composite analysis of 277 higher institutions with the intent of knowing which spot they could occupy if they are an institution. Analysis shows that 170 Southern institutions considered in the ranking only occupy 15451 [on average] while the Northern institutions occupy 16870. In all the three indicators, institutions in the southern region are better than those situated in the northern region. The difference in the average position occupies by the regions is significant only within the impact indicator, suggesting that institutions in the two regions are not better in openness and excellence indicators.
These insights call for urgent policy and managerial actions from the institutions’ administrators and academics. Administrators need to work out actionable plans towards making their institutions and faculty members more visible. This is imperative, particularly in the use of Google Scholar and the web presence of the institutions.
Exhibit 1: Average Position of Nigerian Higher Institutions by Region in the World
