No Nigerian University Makes World’s First 700

No Nigerian university made the list of first 700 higher institutions of learning in the world and the first 18 in Africa. 

This is according to the rankings of the 2015/16 QS World University Rankings 2015/16 published yesterday on Tuesday, September 15, on topuniversities.com.
In Africa, out of the 18 universities ranked, Nigeria is nowhere to be found while South Africa has nine institutions, Egypt has five and Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania all have one institution each.
The ranking, according to the report, is based on six performance indicators to assess the institutions’ global reputation, research impact, staffing levels and international complexion.” The reports said the universities were placed on 40 per cent scale of academic reputation; employer reputation, 10 per cent; student-to-faculty ratio, 20 per cent; citations per faculty, 20 per cent; international faculty ratio, five per cent; and international student ratio, five per cent.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States, stays on the first position of the QS rankings for the fourth year in a row. Harvard University (US) came up two places to take the second position, closely followed by the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), and Stanford University (US) in joint third.
California Institute of Technology, US, takes the fifth position, University of Oxford, UK, sixth, UCL (University College London), UK, seventh, Imperial College, London, UK, eighth, ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland, ninth, and the University of Chicago, US, 10th.
On the list, African universities which made it are: The University of Cape Town, South Africa ( ranked first in africa and 171st in the world), the Stellenbosch University, South Africa (ranked second in Africa and 302nd in the world),  the University of the Witwatersrand (third in Africa and 331st in the world).
Also on the Africa’s top list are The American University in Cairo, Egypt, 345th position in the world; Cairo University, Egypt, 501-550; Rhodes University, South Africa, 501-550; University of Pretoria, South Africa, 501-550; University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, 551-600; and the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, 601-650, respectively.
Other institutions on the African ranking, which also share same points range of 701+, are the Ain Shams University, Egypt; Al Azhar University , Egypt; Alexandria University, Egypt; Makerere University, Uganda; North-West University, South Africa; University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; University of Ghana; University of Nairobi, Kenya; and the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.
The report read: “The primary aim of the QS World University Rankings is to help students make informed comparisons of leading universities around the world. Based on six performance indicators, the rankings are designed to assess universities in four areas: research, teaching, employability and internationalization.
“Each of the six indicators carries a different weighting when calculating the overall scores (see below). Four of the indicators are based on ‘hard’ data, and the remaining two are based on major global surveys – one of academics and another of employers – each the largest of their kind.”