Israel’s Hebrew University best in Mideast, say Saudi rankings

It would be recalled that Nigeria’s premier university, the University of Ibadan, was ranked amongst the world’s best 800 in similar rankings conducted by a London-based organization, the Times Higher Education in 2016.

The Center for World Universities Ranking (CWUR) has explained why Nigerian universities were not considered in their Top 1000 global ranking.

The ranking, by a Saudi-based consultancy, is one of several global rankings conducted annually, which, although viewed with some scepticism by academics, have gained currency with the public.

But SA’s universities did not enjoy global prestige, with Wits ranked 176th in the world and UCT 265th. UKZN came in fourth in SA but 467th in the world while the University of Pretoria was fifth in SA but 697th in the world.

Wits dropped from 149th in 2015 to 176.

The University of Cape Town (UCT) has been ranked second, with Stellenbosch University coming in third.

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.

The top 10 schools were all located in the United States and United Kingdom.

Others criteria 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 worldwide patent filings (5%)”.

The top five are: Harvard University, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (all US), University of Cambridge and University of Oxford (both UK).

In Africa, only universities in South Africa and Egypt made the list.