Top Kenyan universities dwarfed in inaugural Sub-Saharan ranking
Kenya’s top institutions of higher learning have miss out in the top 100 list in the latest university ranking report released on Monday this week.
The Times Higher Education’s inaugural Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) university ranking put Eastern Kenya’s Embu University top on the list in the country at position 16, while Uganda’s Makerere University came at number 5.
Other Kenyan institutions of higher learning that made it to the list were Rongo University (25), Kibabii University (36), and Kabarak University (42). Others are University of Kabianga, Maasai Mara University, and Riara University.
The University of Nairobi (UoN), Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), and Kenyatta University (KU) did not appear anywhere in the ranking.
However, Ashesi University in Ghana which carried out the research indicated that it only ranked 121 universities that had provided data for the exercise. That effectively meant that top universities like UoN had not submitted the data making them ineligible.
“This first edition ranks 88 universities across 20 countries. An additional 33 institutions are listed because they provided data but did not meet our eligibility criteria to receive a rank.” The team behind the ranking says.
The ranking, which had 121 universities in total, used a methodology that covers five key pillars namely resources and finances, access and fairness, teaching skills, student engagement, and African impact.
In the top 10, South Africa had four universities including the first two institutions; the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Johannesburg. Tanzania had two while Uganda, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Ghana had one each.
Sub-Saharan countries higher education institutions were flexible as well as efficient and often went the extra mile to track their graduate’s progress, hence the fair ranking.
“Public and private higher education institutions in sub-Saharan Africa complement each other in providing quality education for the masses.” Laté Lawson, research manager at the Charity Education Sub-Saharan Africa said.
Pauline Rose, the professor of international education at the University of Cambridge and director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning Centre, lamented that the institutions were underfunded and experienced large faculty-to-student ratios and limited time as well as money for research.
The top three universities on the list were the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) and the University of Johannesburg (South Africa) and the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Science (Tanzania).
