University rankings – The Nigerian experience

By Wachira Kigotho. The absence of nearly all African universities from global ranking systems has been of major concern to potential students, parents, employers and other stakeholders, who feel locked out of making informed choices on the quality of universities in Africa. But Nigeria – which has one of the largest higher education systems on the continent, comprising 128 universities – has established a national ranking system, the first of its kind in Africa. In 2001 Nigeria’s National Universities Commission, or NUC, developed a set of indicators of verifiable data that could help prospective students to make career choices.
“There was also the desire by the government to have a transparent and objective mechanism for identifying centres for excellence that could benefit from preferential funding,” said Professor Peter Okebukola, a former executive secretary of the NUC, in a study on Nigeria’s experience of ranking published in UNESCO’s recent report on Rankings and Accountability in Higher Education: Uses and misuses. More...