[0:10]Oh, yes, hello everyone and welcome to another of uh mastering ranking lessons. And today we're going to be looking at academic ranking of World Universities, ARWU. AKA, that's otherwise known as Shanghai Rankings. Today, March 6, 2026, I am Peter. Okay. And they say Shanghai Ranking. What why Shanghai Ranking? Shanghai Ranking because the rankers, just one professor and a and a and two assistants. conducted this ranking in Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. I visited the lab uh in 2007 and uh beautiful university. I tell you beautiful university. And in 2011 we gathered in UNESCO headquarters in Paris. I showed this uh uh picture the last uh the last lesson. This is Professor Lou. He's the one who does the Shanghai ranking. And this is uh Phil Baty, who is the the big bad, the chief executive of Times Higher Education. Both of them doing great work. I do for Nigeria, I used to do for Africa. And so, the UNESCO book on rankings and accountability, uh chapter 8, an African perspective on rankings in higher education by Peter Okebukola. What are we going to do in this lesson? We're going to look at the history of ARWU. You don't know what ARWU is now. Academic Ranking of World University. Look at the methodology. Look at the timelines. Look at how African universities are performing. Underperforming, or performing, or overperforming. Then we'll look at comparative rankings. So let's look at the history. Come with me to 1998, actually just before. The Chinese government said, hey, we want our universities, and I love that, to be among the top universities to build world-class universities. So they had that as a project called Project 985. And so the Shanghai Jiao Tong University people said, hey, yeah, let us see how we can benchmark, how we can develop a ranking scheme that will that will focus on measurable academic and research outputs, rather than reputation surveys, rather than reputation. No, no. Measurable outcomes that we will benchmark Chinese universities against global leaders. So, by 2003 ARWU was published. And uh this is the timeline, two decades of uh significant growth. 2003, as I said, the first one published, 500 universities showed up there. Harvard came as number one. Now, 2004, methodology was refined. 2007, subject rankings in five broad fields introduced. Shanghai Ranking Consultancy established this. And now ranks about 1,000 institutions globally. 55 subjects used by 2,000 plus institutions for strategy. This is the evolution, the timeline, same as I said earlier. So let's go on to the methodology. Before I go, let me ask you. Times Higher Education World University Rankings, can you tell me the methodology? Hey, you don't forget. Uh-huh. See, see yourself now. What about QS World University Rankings? Or subject rankings? Yeah, I know you have not forgotten because in all the tests, you got 750 over 750 in the practicals, you did very well. You are the very best. Okay, we've not told you about ARWU, so let me tell you about ARWU now. There are six indicators. How many did I say? Yeah, you got heard me right. Six. So what are the six? You have alumni. What does alumni mean? You know what alumni means. Somebody who has left your university. If your alumni wins a Nobel Prize, you know what Nobel Prize is, of course, and field medals. What are field medals? The field medal is the equivalent of Nobel Prize in uh mathematics. I'm sure that Professor Musi would be the mathematical dean of science. He's aiming towards getting the field medal. Okay, now this takes 10%. Now, if the Nobel Prize winner is in your university, teaching. Yes, teaching your university. Then that's the award component of this. The indicator. Look at this. 20% Nobel Prize saving. 10% Nobel Prize alumni. You can see a whole one-third goes to Nobel Prize. You see, highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories. The Clarivate Researcher uh citation. 20%. There are two generals called nature and other one called uh uh nature and science journals, past five years, the papers are published by your staff. Yeah. 20%. And then per capita, that's not capital. There's no L here. Capito in Latin. I did Latin for today, those days. You did Latin. Okay, fine. That's uh per capita means per head. Per capita academic performance. So that's 10%. So these are the six. Uh these are the ratings that are accorded to it. So you go to the site, you find alumni 10%, award 20%, Asian HCI, just like I reported just now. These are the indicators and the weights. How many indicators again did you see? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Six indicators. And these are the weights. So where does Professor Lou and his team, where do they get the data? Straightforward. They didn't ask you anything except you accept your your your staff data. That's all. They get the Nobel Prize, they don't need to ask you, do you have Nobel Prize for your university? They don't ask you. They there's a database, official database of Nobel Prize winners and field medal winners. So they get the information from there. Then for your highly cited researchers, Clarivate Web of Science. You did that in this last practical, of course. So, it's got from there. InCites Journal Analytics Platform, that's where that was got. Nature and Science publishers records, that's where it's got. So only this one. So what is the process? Hmm. First thing, of course, is data collection, between January and April. There's normalized, there's the waiting, PCP adjustment. And then by August, you have the publication. So let's look at the latest one. The latest, actually, is 2025. Uh Harvard came top of the pack, rank one. Stanford, next. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, for short, third and the rest. So you can see their ranks, you can see their total score, and you can see their scores on the six. indicators, alumni, award. You can see 100% here. You will see in a minute why it's 100%. Award, HCI, N&S, PUB, and PCP. So that's the thing. So what are the timelines? I mentioned a bit of it earlier. So data harvesting starts January to February. You know we are March. Today is March 6th, 2026. Uh March to April, the highly cited researcher verification goes on. Computation and quality assurance. July, there's a pre-release review. Then by August, there's a public. Yes, everybody comes to see. Uh review. Let's look at how African universities. I need to ask you. Looking at those indicators. How do you think African universities fair? Hm? I can hear some people saying, oh, yeah, they fair very well. And I agree with you. I can hear some people say, no, I don't think they fair very well. I also agree with you. And so what if I'm in between. But I know that Africa, we have great promise, but for now, it is not so good. It's not good, so good because if if you look at the the award and alumni, 30% Nobel Prize winners. Nobel Prize winners are very thin on the ground in Africa. So let's look at it. Look at Nobel Prize winners from 1901 to 2024. See North America, 430. Europe, 510. Hey, Africa, do well. Hey, we can't do well. The least, see, the least. 12. So this is these are some. So Africa severely underrepresented here. In the ARWU. And in fact, when I when somebody asked me to rank, rank in terms of rigor, I rank ARWU the first top. As number one in terms of rigor, among all the all the all the ranking schemes. Okay. So let's look at the institutions with the most Nobel laureates. Hmm. Look at Harvard. Harvard has 161 Nobel Prize winners. Do you know how many students are in Harvard today? 25,100 students. 25,000. Your your some of your universities will get 1 million students. No, not 1 million. Maybe 40,000, 50,000. How many Nobel Prize winners? Zero. So you can see Harvard 161. But don't blame us in Africa. We are young in terms of the age of our universities. Harvard University 1636. Don't, don't hold, hold my part, hold my part. Cambridge 121, Berkeley 107. MIT. Do you know how many students are in MIT? Under 12,000. So it means that at MIT every corner you turn, even Nobel, you would smell Nobel Prize, you would smell for that place. So everywhere you turn in these universities, you get you see Nobel Prize winners. The others are here that you can see on the screen. So African universities, yes, we have some Nobel Prize winners, but just look at it. Uh Peace, we get them inside. Literature, yes, but Physics, the diaspora Africans, Chemistry, diaspora Africans, Medicine, Economics. Anyway, uh African universities on ARWU 2024, so you have 18 there uh in the top 1,000. South African universities, 11. So University of Cape Town, that's the University of Cape Town here, is in the band of 1, 501 to 600. Okay, so why are we struggling? You know the answer. Why are we struggling? We have fewer relative to the other regions. Highly cited researchers. Oh, you can see less than 3% of the world's HCI researchers are there in Africa. Less than 3% of the global world, less than 3%. Why? They don't give us research money. That's a lie. Low research funding. You know, African people. Don't let me come and watch out there. Limited access to high impact journals, and brain drain are primary drivers. Absence from Nobel and Field Prizes, I mentioned that one before.
[11:20]Underrepresentation in Nature Journal and Science. So, 2%. Africa produces less than 2% of papers in Nature and Science. Low indexed publication volumes. Low output ratios. So, if you ask me, how are you going to, how are we going to bolster Africa's performance? It's just reversing all of this. So, these are the reversing things that I mentioned. Strategic tips for. Pronounce it any how you like. Police no go catch you. Strategic tips for ARWU improvement. Build research clusters and centers of excellence. Great enough, the African Center of Excellence blows up so well. And I'd like to congratulate uh Association of African Universities AAU. Me, I'm the I'm the West African ambassador. Me, I'm ambassador, you have to call me ambassador. Ambassador Peter Okebukola. Oh, yes. And uh Baba uh Yole, Professor Unushola Yole. That's our Oga. That's our boss in Accra. So, uh they they ran the African Center of Excellence so well. So, I hope the trust because World Bank has put out has pulled out. I hope the trust goes up. I cultivate international research collaborations. Migrate publications to WoS-indexed journals. So, you have Scopus and SciELO. Also go to Web of Science. Invest in highly cited researcher recruitment and retention. Establish strategic recognition pathways. Strengthen research data and reporting infrastructure. So, let's look at we have done Times Higher Education World University Rankings, we have done QS, we have done ARWU. Webometrics is going to be next week. But let us look at how these four, how they compare in in number of things because, because, because this is the heart of the matter of the new one that you your group. We're going to come up with for Africa, for Nigeria, and your different countries. So, look at the comparison of four major uh rankings. The publishers, Times Higher Education, Quacquarelli Symonds, Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, Cybermetrics Lab, CSIC, Spain. Started, universities ranked. Hey, you think I'm I will be I'm going to read this thing? No, I'm not going to read it. I expect, because you are sharp. Module 12 participants, you can take a shot of this and look at the thing later. Reputation survey, bibliometric weight, unique strength, African representation. You can see uh Webometrics 200 plus. You expect that ARWU that we're looking at today, less than about 18 universities. Key weaknesses, uh you find them here. Now, so this is the thing that we are, you see, where we develop that of Africa. We're going to ensure that when they look at it, where where where what do I mean by day? And those outside Africa, they will not say that, hey, look at them, look at them, weak, weak. No. We have to do something that is comparable and has African context. Contextualize it, but we are not going to go below this one. So, look at Times Higher Education World University Rankings, teaching and learning, you can see the research environment, research quality. This is going to be your project. You are going to develop a model uh for Africa. Industry income. QS World University Rankings, academic reputation survey, employer reputation survey, faculty. See all of this. So, this table is very important. Make a note of it. So, which ranking will serve our purpose? Now, African universities seeking quick wins. Times Higher Education and Webometrics. You can add QS to this. What about where related to national policy and government accountability? All the four. Webometrics, digital presence and and all of this. So, that is this is for your purpose, for our purpose or all the four. And then uh for specifically for quick wins, then for African university. What are we taking away? We're taking away the fact for the ARWU, African universities are severely underrepresented. Why? Why? Why? Because, uh uh let's see now.
[15:43]Gaps in highly cited researchers, Nobel laureates, and Nature Science publications. So, improvement, what improvement, of course, requires long-term investment. Research centers, HCI recruitment, Web of Science targeted publications, and international co-authorship. Mind you, all the four, ARWU, Times Higher Education, QS, and Webometrics each serve different purposes. Institutional leaders should strategically, not rely on any single ranking. So, do your best to appear on the on these different rankings and uh that will be it.
[16:25]So let's go on a short break and when we come back from the break, we'll go take on our practical.
[16:37]Yeah, so, welcome from the short break. We're going on to the practical session. As I wrote to you that special uh newsletter, this course, practicals, practicals, practicals from now on. No more Monday live lectures because this is known for development of skills. Uh it's the best. This is the best in the whole of Africa. So, what's our practical six about? It's gap analysis. Gap analysis on Academic Ranking of World Universities. What are we going to do? We're just going to conduct a gap analysis on rankings on the 2025 ARWU. So, your practical report will look like this. You're going to go to the site of ARWU and just list the top five institutions. You know, we mentioned them. I mentioned them earlier. You pull their total score, the score on alumni, on award, on highly cited, on Nature and Science, on publications, and PCP. Just put them here. Simple. It will take you a couple of minutes to do that. Now, you're going to go to ARWU for top five African rankings 2025. You have to select from at least three countries. So, the first institution that's Cape Town, of course, put the total score, you fill their alumni score, you put all of that. The second, the third, the fourth. Then your institution, your institution. You write the name of your institution there like in my case now they got State University. Total score will be zero because not appearing there alumni. And most of you in this room, all of you, I think, uh in the in the course, almost all, maybe 99.9, whatever percent will be zero, zero, zero, zero. And projecting this from the scores and from what Africa has been able to do. So, let's take on the demonstration of this exercise. Yeah, so, we do Academic Ranking of World Universities. It's just do a Google. You find it there. Shanghai Ranking. Uh you click on this. And uh you go to rankings, you go to Academic Ranking of World Universities, and that's it. So, the five, 1, 2, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, and California, Berkeley. So, all you do is just copy this thing here. My, my dear participants, total score alumni and the rest. So, what about the second part? That of Africa. So, I said three countries. So, you can start with South Africa, knowing that it is uh the one that has uh uh let's see, you can take because Nigeria is not here. Yeah, so you have South Africa here. So you take Cape Town. Uh you can see uh the alumni score, total score, it's not even there, don't worry then if you don't have that. Uh alumni score, award, this, this and that. So you put all of those ones there. Uh yeah, so that's it. I asked you to take like three countries. Yeah, you can see Ghana is here. Ghana. So you can take Ghana. So you have University of Ghana. Zero, zero. No, no. Zero, this, this, this. So that's what you're going to put in there. There's also Ethiopia. Yeah, okay, you have you also have Egypt. Yeah, so go on to Egypt. So you can see Cairo University. Yeah, you can see all of that. So this is quite, quite wonderful. You can get your data from here. Yeah, so by way of discussing you have uh 5, 5, 5. Sorry, 20 marks for each of these cells. All the ones here. Uh so for the African one, we didn't get it. We didn't send any total score. So the marks will come from here. And then your discussion of results, recommendations and conclusion. The marking scheme is like this. For the global, five institutions. That's seven indicators. 20 marks, 700. For Africa, five institutions, that's six indicators. Well, I've taken off this one. Uh that's 600. Discussion of results, 500. Just as you can see here, you are going to be putting your pocket 2,600 marks. Yeah, so to summarize what have we done in this lesson? We have looked at the history, we looked at methodology, and we looked at the comparative rankings. So, what's going to be next? Next, of course, is Webometrics rankings. Until then, it is bye-bye from me, Peter Okebukola.
