The latest (July 2008) Webometrics web-presence ranking of over 16,000 universities around the world ranks Massachusetts Institute of Technology (in the US) first in the world, and of course in the US. The world ranking places the University of Cape Town (in South Africa) number one position in Africa -- and a respectable 385th in the world. The University of Dar Es Salaam (in Tanzania), ranks first in both Tanzania and East Africa, 24th in Africa and 4,334th in the world. The University of Nairobi -- "the mother and father" of public universities, indeed all universities, in Kenya -- ranks first in Kenya, second in East Africa, 25th in Africa and 4,338th in the world. UoN was not Kenya's number one six months ago, Egerton University was. Shortly after Egerton University was declared number one, Kenyatta University (KU) was, in turn, declared Kenya's number one public university in terms of the match between its declared performance targets and actual performance attainments; but KU has fared badly in terms of global web-presence. So, who's really number one in Kenya, and how long will the cheers last? It is as though a version of the theory of relativity is at play here -- in Kenya and in Africa. If so, what about around the world?
For a full list of Africa's Top 100 universities, click on this link >>> Top 100 Universities in Africa . The list (first reported in the Sunday Standard edition of July 27, 2008) shows that all but one of the Top ten of those 100 universities are to be found in South Africa. The other is in Egypt.
Indeed, as the list below shows, among the Top 30 in Africa, 11 are in South Africa, 5 in Egypt, 3 in Morocco, 2 in Kenya, 2 in Namibia, and 1 in each of the following: Algeria, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Rounding off Africa's Top 30 list is National University of Rwanda, which is ranked 5, 002 in the world. Conspicuously absent from the list are universities in Nigeria, Africa's political and economic powerhouse -- with, moreover, a long tradition of university education. Ghana's absence is likewise conspicuous and surprising. But just as surprising are the inclusion of one Rwandese and two Namibian institutions, given the two countries' relatively shorter "post-independence" history. Namibian institutions are in fact ranked 21st and 22nd in Africa, and 4,270 and 4,275, respectively, in the world. In either case, Namibian institutions are ahead of their counterparts throughout East Africa. University of Zimbabwe (17 in Africa and 4,001 in the world) is also placed higher than any of its counterparts in East Africa, despite Zimbabwe's terrible economic and political circumstances.
List of Top 30 Universities in Africa:
(Country and World Ranking in Brackets)
1. University of Cape Town (South Africa: 385)
2. Stellenbosch University (South Africa: 654)
3. Rhodes University (South Africa: 722)
4. University of Pretoria (South Africa: 734)
5. University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa: 831)
6. University of the Western Cape (South Africa: 1,218)
7. University of Kwazulu Natal (South Africa: 1,313)
8. University of South Africa (South Africa: 1,499)
9. American University in Cairo (Egypt: 1,654)
10. Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (South Africa: 2,145)
11. Cairo University (Egypt: 2,934)
12. University of the Free State (South Africa: 2,946)
13. Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (Senegal: 2,962)
14. University of Johannesburg (South Africa: 3,704)
15. University of Mauritius (Mauritius: 3,756)
16. Université Cadi Ayyad (Morocco: 3,961)
17. University of Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe: 4,001)
18. Mansoura University (Egypt: 4,002)
19. Ain Shams University (Egypt: 4,112)
20. University of Namibia (Namibia: 4,223)
21. Polytechnic of Namibia (Namibia: 4,270)
22. Al Akhawayn University Ifrane (Morocco: 4,275)
23. Université Abdelmalek Essadi (Morocco: 4,309)
24. University of Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania: 4,334)
25. University of Nairobi (Kenya: 4,338)
26. Université Abou Bekr Belkaid Tlemcen (Algeria: 4,452)
27. Arab Academy for Science & Technology and Maritime Transport (Egypt: 4,552)
28. Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (Mozambique: 4,689)
29. Strathmore University Nairobi (Kenya: 4,780)
30. National University of Rwanda (Rwanda: 5,002)
How was the global ranking carried out? We are told, first of all, that:
"The unit for analysis is the institutional domain, so only universities and research centres with an independent web domain are considered. If an institution has more than one main domain, two or more entries are used with the different addresses. About 5-10% of the institutions have no independent web presence, most of them located in developing countries. Our catalogue of institutions includes not only universities but also other Higher Education institutions following the recommendations of UNESCO. Names and addresses were collected from both national and international sources..."
So, what are the criteria? Four ranks -- V, S, R and Sc -- were developed, as we will see presently. These were then combined "according to a formula where each one has a different weight". The formula is presented as follows:
Webometrics Rank (position)=4*RankV+2*RankS+1*RankR+1*RankSc
The principle underlying this formula was that:
"University activity is multi-dimensional and this is reflected in its web presence. So the best way to build the ranking is combining a group of indicators that measures these different aspects."
This provided the rationale for identifying indicators for the respective ranks. In this respect, we are told that:
"Almind & Ingwersen proposed the first Web indicator, Web Impact Factor (WIF), based on link analysis that combines the number of external inlinks and the number of pages of the website, a ratio of 1:1 between visibility and size. This ratio is used for the ranking but adding two new indicators to the size component: Number of documents, measured from the number of rich files in a web domain, and number of publications being collected by Google Scholar database."
The four indicators in the Webometrics formula are further elaborated as follows:
1. Web Visibility (V): This refers to the number of external inlinks. "total number of unique external links received (inlinks) by a site" as recorded via Yahoo Search, Live Search and Exalead. For each engine, it is stated, "results are log-normalised to 1 for the highest value and then combined to generate the rank."
2. Web Size (S): the number of pages in an institution's website, captured by four search engines: Google, Yahoo, Live Search and Exalead. Here, too, it is stated that "For each engine, results are log-normalised to 1 for the highest value. Then for each domain, maximum and minimum results are excluded and every institution is assigned a rank according to the combined sum."
3. Number of documents -- that is, Rich Files (R) -- hosted by the website: These were counted using Google, as long as they were in any of the following file formats (which were deemed most relevant to "academic and publication activities", as well as being accommodative of different volumes of text): Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), Adobe PostScript (.ps), Microsoft Word (.doc) and Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt). The Google results for each file type were merged "after log-normalising in the same way as described before."
4. Number of publications in the website's database, as verified through Google Scholar search -- Scholar (Sc): "Google Scholar provides the number of papers and citations for each academic domain." This "publications" indicator is quite liberally defined, seeing that it includes all "papers, reports and other academic items" captured in the search.
Three related rationales or considerations, broader in their sweep than the indicators per se, informed the ranking process -- a process which the publishers admit is a work in progress, useful (and defensible) as it is in its present form. There will of course be spirited debate.
The three rationales were, to use the publisher's words:
1. Relevance and validity of the indicators: "The choice of the indicators was done according to several criteria (see note), some of them trying to catch quality and academic and institutional strengths but others intending to promote web publication and Open Access initiatives. The inclusion of the total number of pages is based on the recognition of a new global market for academic information, so the web is the adequate platform for the internationalization of the institutions. A strong and detailed web presence providing exact descriptions of the structure and activities of the university can attract new students and scholars worldwide . The number of external inlinks received by a domain is a measure that represents visibility and impact of the published material, and although there is a great diversity of motivations for linking, a significant fraction works in a similar way as bibliographic citation. The success of self-archiving and other repositories related initiatives can be roughly represented from rich file and Scholar data. The huge numbers involved with the pdf and doc formats means that not only administrative reports and bureaucratic forms are involved. PostScript and Powerpoint files are clearly related to academic activities."
2. Measures of outcomes rather than inputs, as far as possible: "Data on inputs are relevant as they reflect the general condition of a given establishment and are more frequently available. Measures of outcomes provide a more accurate assessment of the standing and/or quality of a given institution or program. We expect to offer a better balance in the future, but [the] current edition intend[s] to call...attention to incomplete strategies, inadequate policies and bad practices in web publication before attempting a more complete scenario."
3. Weighting of different indicators: "The current rules for ranking indicators including the described weighting model has (sic) been tested and published in scientific papers. More research is still [to be] done on this topic, but the final aim is to develop a model that includes additional quantitative data, especially bibliometric and scientometric indicators."
It is clear that universities which want to improve their global and continental ranking will have to work on the criteria set by this ranking entity, even as those criteria evolve. Developing-country institutions should be actively involved in that evolution, and in the attendant debate.
To my mind, the criteria, as so far developed, are surprisingly empathetic to the general circumstances of Third World universities; and in particular are quite accommodative of those with a strong research-and-publications record, plus a sense of the esteem-value of a dynamic web presence. They are far less subjective (or otherwise biased), and avail a significantly more level playing-field, compared to the rule of thumb which has usually guided the rankings not just of institutions but also of the academics, who make such institutions possible at all. That rule of thumb has been designed largely to capture and highlight institutions' relative funded-research record and volumes of refereed publications in "international" journals and books -- and partly to reflect institutions' relative reputations as judged by prominent scholars (usually/historically based in the West). If "egalitarian" never endorsed the absence of effort, these criteria are, in a word, quite egalitarian.
Of course, money still talks in other ways; and explains the concentration of world scholars in US universities, which (let's not forget) have the remuneration packages and "working environments" to attract and retain them. However, the Webometric rankings are a pointer to the possibility that money does not entirely talk -- and to the greater possibility that academic institutions and academics, with a joint passion for excellence, can excel in this world, recardless of the part of the world in which they happen to be.As I conclude, let us consider for a moment the latest list of the Top 30 universities in the world:
Rank Name of University (Country)
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)
2. Harvard University (USA)
3. Stanford University (USA)
4. University of California Berkeley (USA)
5. Pennsylvania State University (USA)
6. University of Michigan (USA)
7. Cornell University (USA)
8. University of Minnesota (USA)
9. University of Wisconsin Madison (USA)
10. University of Texas Austin (USA)
11. University of Illinois Urbana Champaign (USA)
12. University of Pennsylvania (USA)
13. University of Washington (USA)
14. Carnegie Mellon University (USA)
15. Columbia University New York (USA)
16. Purdue University (USA)
17. University of California Los Angeles (USA)
18. University of Florida (USA)
19. University of Chicago (USA)
20. University of Maryland (USA)
21. University of Arizona (USA)
22. Texas A&M University (USA)
23. Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
24. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (USA)
25. Princeton University (USA)
26. University of Cambridge (UK)
27. Michigan State University (USA)
28. University of Toronto (Canada)
29. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (USA)
30. Rutgers University (USA).
All but two of the world's Top 30 universities are based in the United States. The two are University of Cambridge (ranked 26th) and University of Toronto (ranked 28th). But that's a long way from when Al-Azhar was the one and only university in the ("known"?) world. Let me then, in view of all this, frame differently the question I posed earlier: If vesion of the theory of relativity is at play in the world ranking that we have looked at, what and how long is it going to take for a non-US university to become the world's number one? Will that be in our lifetime?
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