Decaying infrastructure, brain drain responsible for Nigerian universities’ poor ranking. —Bogoro
The Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund(TETFund) Prof. Suleiman Bogoro, has blamed poor ranking of Nigerian universities on the global index on poor infrastructure and brain drain.
Bogoro made this known at a two day Capacity Building Workshop organised for Beneficiary Universities on Monday in Abuja.
He said the loss in quality of faculty due to brain drain of lecturers and brilliant students to foreign institutions were some of the reasons, adding that decaying infrastructure had in no small measure affected Nigerian universities ranking.
He further blamed the development on poor attitude of Nigerian lecturers to teaching and research, large numbers of students at the undergraduate level and limited financial and physical resources.
According to him, other factors like low investment in research in public universities, poor performance on international linkages and collaborations were responsible.
The executive secretary said, in all of Africa, only South Africa and Egypt featured relatively well on the world ranking tables.
“The performance of Nigerian Universities remains far below expectation.
“The situation is so unfortunate and worrisome that it calls for reflection and action on the part of the government, the Nigerian intelligentsia and indeed the Nigerian people.
“It is challenging in the sense that the success of our universities is tied to the progress and development of the nation.
“If the Asian countries were able to rise to such enviable place along the ranking of world universities, nothing stops Nigerian universities from making similar progress if they are so determined,” he said.
Bogoro disclosed that on the global index, the USA and UK and Europe dominated the list of the different rankings according to the World Ranking Review [W.E.N.R].
He said according to W.E.N.R, the ranking was done from about four selected different rankings across the world.
He said the rankings were the CNT Leiden ranking, Shanghai Jiao Tong academic ranking, QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) world university ranking and Times Higher Education world university ranking.
“The QS 2021 ranking mostly feature Harvard, Oxford, MIT, Cal Tech, Cambridge, ETH Zurich, Imperial College, UCL and the university of Chicago as the top ten highest ranking universities in the world.
“This is very similar to the Time Higher Education ranking for the same period.
“The University of Ibadan tops the list for Nigeria universities, ranking 401- 500th on the Time Higher Education(THE) 2022 table.
“Other Nigerian universities that made it to the top 1000 on the THE 2022 table are the University of Lagos 501- 600 and Covenant University Otta 601 – 608.
“In the 2021 THE table, the Lagos State University Ojo was ranked 501-600, 2nd to the University of Ibadan’ he said.
The executive secretary said some of the indicators used in ranking include teaching, research, citations, international outlook, industry income, academic and employer reputation.
Other indicators according to him are, faculty and student ratio, international faculty ratio and international student ratio.
He said in the quest to find solution to the problem, TETFund came up with the National Research and Development Foundation Research (NRDF) as well as organised series of programmes for public tertiary institutions in the country among other things.
He said education had continued to be a beacon for the sustainable existence of society and had been identified as the panacea for the survival of the human race.
“Through education, knowledge is acquired, and skills are gained for various endeavors necessary for existence.
“The well-being and survival of mankind largely depends on what man has learned and what he can make or do for himself.
“The very fact that the survival of humanity is dependent on knowledge makes the need for education indispensable.
“Many of the great nations that we see today as giants were able to attain such heights through education and the quest for knowledge,” Bogoro added.
