LAGOS – Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State has emerged as the nation’s number one university in the Times Higher Education (THE) Young University Rankings 2022.
Also, occupying the second and third positions on the rankings released on Wednesday are the University of Ilorin (UNILORIN) and the Lagos State University (LASU).
It would be recalled that LASU ranked 3rd this year was rated first in 2021while Covenant University occupied the second position.
THE Young University Rankings list the world’s best Universities that are 50 years old or younger and featured 539 universities, up from 475 in 2021.
For the current rankings, 251 institutions are listed with “reporter” status, meaning that they provided data but did not meet the eligibility criteria to receive a rank.
In the 2022 rankings, Covenant was rated within 201-250, UNILORIN 401+ while LASU occupied the third place.
The universities are judged across all their core missions of teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons available.
On the global scale, Paris Sciences et Lettres -PSL Research University, France emerged as the world’s best young university for the first time this year.
The 2021 frontrunner Nanyang Technological University, Singapore dropped to second place.
Hong Kong has three institutions in the top 10, more than any other territory, while France is the most represented country in the top 20, with five institutions in this group.
Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands is the highest new entry in the ranking occupying fourth place.
India and Turkey overtook the UK to become the most represented countries overall, with 40 institutions each. The UK shares third place with Iran (both have 37 universities).
According to THE, the young table, perhaps more than any other ranking, reflects global higher education policy developments.
Using the United Kingdom experience, THE said the UK’s lead was a result of two major policy changes.
“One in the 1960s that came in the wake of the landmark Robbins report on higher education that recommended a large expansion of the system, and legislation in the early 1990s which allowed dozens of institutions that were polytechnics to become universities. The universities that were established in response to the former have since left the ranking after reaching their 51st birthday.
It explained that India’s rise to joint top of the country list reflects the expansion in the number of Institutes of Technology in 2008, as well as the emergence of new private universities, in a bid to meet the aspirations of a growing middle class.
Besides, THE observed that the number of Turkish universities has also mushroomed since the 1990s in response to its growing population, adding that the European University Association’s (EUA) Public Funding Observatory reports that student numbers in Turkey increased by a staggering 230 per cent, to almost 8 million, between 2008 and 2019.
However, Hans de Wit, a distinguished Fellow at the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, says university expansion tends to occur in less mature higher education systems.
According to him, in many Asian and African countries, “Demand is growing and supply is still insufficient because they have not been that strong in the past at offering higher education, so there is a strong need for more universities,” he says.
In other parts of Africa, the University of KwaZulu-Natal (64th), Durban University of Technology (112th) and the Northwest University (124th) were rated by THE as the best three in South Africa.
No university is listed in Ghana and a host of countries on the African continent.
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