Emerging Issues on the Global Ranking of Nigerian Universities

Introduction

Universities around the world are veritable tools for socio-economic and political development of nations. In other words, university education is the bedrock for national development. In specific terms, universities are agents of national development through research which leads to advancement in knowledge in different areas of human existence (agriculture, science and technology, medicine, politics, law, religion, or culture). Besides, knowledge creation, universities have impacted significantly human resource development and capacity building in the society. Thus, universities are centers for knowledge creation and transfer to the wider society for socio-economic, political, religious and cultural development. Mashat and Fardoum (2017) affirmed that higher education is an essential element of cultural, social, economic and political development. The evolution of science and technology has impacted significantly the development and sustainability of the human society especially in the area of health with discovery of knowledge to combat various diseases including as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and recently COVID-19. Basically, advancement in scientific and technological knowledge has significantly brought socio-economic empowerment in developed countries when compared with developing countries such as Nigeria. This is so because of the development of “world-class universities” in these countries, commonly referred to as advanced economies, essentially dominated by the European and American countries. World-class universities are universities found on top of different league tables of various global university ranking systems. The emergence of global university ranking systems has brought about globalization and internationalization of universities. This has led to competition not only among universities but different countries in the world for academic excellence, prestige and reputation. Hence, Pavel (2015) affirmed that in the current globalized economy, global university rankings are used as tools to measure global competitiveness among universities around the world. Furthermore, other basic reasons according to Pavel (2015) further articulated basic reasons for global rankings of universities to include: the rapid globalization of higher education, the internationalization of higher education, encouraging institutions to participate in broader national and international discussions, as well as to foster international collaboration (such as research partnerships, student and faculty exchange programs) among universities.