AFRICA
Two South African universities, the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Johannesburg, located a few kilometres apart in Johannesburg, emerged first and second out of 88 universities that were rated in the pioneering Times Higher Education Sub-Saharan Africa University Rankings 2023 that were announced on 26 June.
Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Tanzania was placed third, while the University of Pretoria, also in South Africa, and Uganda’s Makerere University were placed in fourth and fifth positions respectively.
Other universities in the top 10, in order of merit, include the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, Covenant University in Nigeria, Rwanda’s University of Global Health Equity, Ashesi University in Ghana and Ardhi University in Tanzania.
Nigeria had the largest contingent of institutions, with 37 on the list, followed by South Africa with nine, Ghana and Kenya seven each, and Somalia and Uganda five each. Tanzania had three universities. In total, 17 countries in the region were represented in the maiden ranking.
According to a statement by Times Higher Education, or THE, of the 88 participating universities, 59, or 67%, were public, while 21, or 24%, were not-for-profit private universities, and the rest, eight institutions or 9%, represented for-profit private institutions.
Sub-Saharan Africa Rankings 2023
Metrics
The rankings, that are already attracting critical attention from academics and other higher education stakeholders in the region, as reported on by University World News, are largely undergraduate-focused and based on a methology that has five pillars, namely resources and finances; access and fairness; teaching skills; student engagement; and Africa impact, which required self-evaluation from institutions that opted to participate.
Further, each of the five pillars has several metrics assigned to it, and the measurements are mostly based on a university’s impact on any of the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. For instance, two metrics, disability access and disability support, which are embedded in the access and fairness pillar, inform on the impact on SDGs on poverty, gender equality and reduced inequalities.
Other metrics took into account how students rated the quality of the learning facilities in their universities, as well as whether those institutions offered professional development to staff and mental health counselling to students. In total, 24 metrics were assessed.
Another key component of the current rankings was a student survey that collected opinions of more than 20,000 students from the 88 universities. An addition to the 88 institutions, 33 universities that did not complete questionnaires could not be included.
After collating the students’ opinions, THE’s briefing stated that students in private universities were found to be more satisfied with their experience compared with their public counterparts when judging the facilities.
Private university students’ interaction with peers and the faculty, employability, course quality and teaching engagement was found to be much better that that of their public university counterparts. According to THE, initially 121 universities participated in the data collection but 33 with incomplete data were dropped and not ranked.
Public universities scored higher points on four pillars: access and fairness; Africa impact; resources and finance; and student engagement. “Private universities generally performed better on teaching and employability skills,” stated the briefing.
According to THE, the methodology for those rankings was developed through extensive engagement with university leaders across the region, under a project initiated by a consortium of African and international higher education organisations led by the private institution, Ashesi University, with support from the Mastercard Foundation.
In his remarks, Phil Baty, the chief global affairs officer at THE, highlighted that those rankings were specifically developed for, and led by, African education organisations, and this marks a significant moment for higher education in the continent.
“It clearly demonstrates the broad and diverse strengths of a wide range of universities and numerous previously unknown differences between public and private universities, which is further illuminated by the results from the student survey,” said Baty.
The rankings in context
But, granted that a great deal in terms of expertise and planning was put into the rankings, what comes to mind is whether the outcome succeeded in showcasing to the rest of the world some of the best universities in Sub-Saharan Africa within the selected parameters.
The perception that the Sub-Saharan Africa University Rankings 2023 gives to students and their parents is that the listing could be used as a yardstick to determine the best institutions to study at in the Sub-Saharan region, rather than that it was a mixed bag of 88 universities in the region that came together and were rated on their performance on a wide range of indicators.
In that context, it would be hard to convince critics of the rankings how a university such as Rongo University in Kenya that got its charter only in 2016 and was in 25th position in those rankings would be placed ahead of Nigeria’s University of Ibadan that was placed in 36th position, or the Lagos State University that was placed in the batch of 51-60.
Embu University in Kenya, that also got its charter in 2016, was in 16th position, ahead of the University of Ghana and University of Zimbabwe that were placed 17th and 18th respectively.
Another surprising winner in those rankings was Abrar University, or in full, Jaamacadda Abraar, a small-sized private university in Somalia that was in 38th position, ahead of well-established public universities such as Lagos State University and the University of Port Harcourt (both 51-60) in Nigeria, and Ghana’s University for Development Studies, that was in 44th position.
According to uniRank™ ranking, the leading international higher education directory and search engine featuring reviews and rankings of recognised universities and colleges in more than 200 countries, Abrar was established nine years ago and has an enrolment range of 500-999 students.
But, whereas it could be argued that some of the newly established universities could have hugely improved and surged ahead of their older counterparts, most of the metrics that were assessed in those rankings require significant financial resources and highly skilled teaching staff.
In this regard, it is no secret that most newly established universities in Sub-Saharan Africa, both public and private, have been struggling to attract highly qualified staff and providing adequate learning facilities, in terms of laboratories, digital platforms, and student accommodation.
Whereas, there is no evidence of unreliable self-reporting on some of the metrics in the current rankings, critics have warned that commercial interests have crept into university ratings.
“On principle, I am against ranking of universities, as I feel they serve little purpose other than providing satisfaction to a small number of universities who keep yo-yoing among the highest-ranked and use it as a marketing tool,” Professor Goolam Mohamedbhai, the former secretary-general of the Association of African Universities, and the former vice-chancellor of the University of Mauritius, recently told University World News.
Commercialisation of HE?
Indeed, commercialisation and the marketing of universities and academic programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa are not very new, since most universities in the region, by the start of the new millennium, had started copy-pasting the Makerere University model of enrolling self-sponsored students to study alongside those getting full-financial support from the government.
The issue is that, in Uganda, prior to 1992, all students accepted into public universities were sponsored by the government and the number was limited by the national budget constraints and the lucky few were selected on merit, based on their final secondary examination scores.
In this case, many students who qualified for university entrance were turned down because the government could not afford to support all of them but were quick to take advantage of private entry schemes.
According to Dr Carrol Bidemi, a former higher education consultant at the World Bank and currently a senior research manager at Research Triangle Institute, or RTI, new sources of funding influenced the behaviour of students, staff and that of the entire university.
Bidemi noted that higher education programmes at Makerere invariably became the site for a fascinating clash of values and priorities, in particular the clash between academic and ‘market’ values.
There is no doubt that some of those values that Bidemi had observed in Makerere in 2007 in her study, ‘Harnessing private monies to fuel university growth: a case study of Makerere University’, have come to be embraced by other universities that are competing for students in order to improve their financial bases.
Taking into account that there is intense competition by universities for students that could pay for their education, there are indicators that some universities had been encouraging their students to become ambassadors and brand evangelists for institutional growth and survival.
Dr David Amani, a lecturer of marketing and entrepreneurship at the University of Dodoma in Tanzania, in a study, ‘Converting students into university brand evangelists: An empirical evidence from the higher education sector in Tanzania’, found that many university managers in Sub-Saharan Africa are turning students into university brand evangelists by putting an emphasis on service encounter behaviours that make students promote their institutions through loyalty and word of mouth.
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