By Emmanuel Edukugho

To enhance the chances of good quality graduates who in turn will deploy their sharp intellect to win the Nobel Prize someday, Professor Peter Okebukola wants the cream of products from the secondary school system to be admitted into universities.

He called for greater vigour in the conduct of the UTME and Post-UTME, while commending JAMB Registrar, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde and his team for ensuring credible UTME scores in the 2011 entrance examination which about 1.5 million candidates participated.

Okebukola, seasoned university administrator, immediate past Executive Secretary, NUC, and former Vice Chancellor, in a lecture presentation titled – Nigerian Universities and World Ranking: Issues, Strategies and Forward Planning delivered at the Conference of Association of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian universities (AVCNU), hosted by Covenant University, Ota, last week, tasked the vice-chancellors to “follow on this track by conducting the post-UTME in a manner that only the best students are admitted into the very limited spaces in our universities.”

Pointing to a table showing the preferred universities of UTME candidates (2011), he said, “the harvest of candidates is rich. On the average, there is one admission space for about 8 UTME candidates.

We have no reason not to select the best on merit and expect that these candidates will be one of those who will win the Nobel Prize in another 20 years making the university to earn high score on the quality of education measure of the Academic Ranking of World Universities, ARWU.”

Top 10 preferred universities of UTME candidates (2011) are as follows:

University of Lagos with 99,195 UTME applicants; Ahmadu Bellow University Zaria, 89,760; University of Nigeria Nsukka 88,177; Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka 84,719; University of Benin, Benin City 80,976; Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-fe 70,935; University of Port Harcourt 65,731; University of Ilorin, Ilorin 65,213; University of Ibdan 48,281 and Bayero University, Kano 40,849.

He explained that training Nigerian graduates under the wings of Nobel Prize winners will foster cultivation of research methodologies, attitudes and values needed to be a prize winner.

“NUC and AVCNU need to undertake a study of institutional location of Nobel Prize winners and seek partnership with such institutions and centres where the laureates are serving.

Bright graduates, preferably first class degree holders can be carefully selected to undertake post-graduate education in such centres. We should begin to fade out the vogue of partnerships with little known universities and laser focus on one or two outstanding universities and programmes where Nobel Prize winners serve.”

Okebukola recalled that the first ranking of Nigerian universities was in 2001. The results of the 1999-2000 national accreditation exercise were used as data for computing programme and institutional ranks and for deriving the league tables.

At a world conference on university ranking in Hiroshima, Japan in 2002, the NUC ranking procedure using accreditation data was widely applauded.

The World Bank in 2006 noted that Nigeria was the only country in sub-Saharan African with a respectable university ranking scheme. (Salmi and Saroyan, 2007).

By 2002, NUC had revised its ranking process, making it more comprehensive by including more indicators. It was further revised in the 2003 ranking.

The 2001 scheme had just one indicator. By 2004, the scheme was expanded to incorporate ranking criteria of the world’s ranking schemes – THE, Webometrics and ARWU.

The following were listed as ranking indicators:

*Percentage of academic programmes of the university with full accreditation status.

*Compliance with carrying capacity (measured by the degree of deviation from carrying capacity. This indicator measures how well enrollment of the university matches available human and material resources. Universities which over-enroll (exceed carrying capacity) are penalised on this measure.

*Proportion of the academic staff of the university at professorial level.

*Foreign content (staff): Proportion of the Academic Staff of the university who are non-Nigerians.

*Foreign content (students): Proportion of the students of the university who are non-Nigerians. This indicator measures how well the university is able to attract foreign students.

*Proportion of the staff of the university with outstanding academic achievements: Such as Nobel Prize winners, National Merit Awardees and Fellows of Academies e.g. Academy of Science; Academy of Letters, Academy of Education, Academy of the Social Sciences.

*Internally generated revenue – measures the ability of the university to generate funds from non-governmental/proprietor sources.

*Research output – how well the staff of the university are able to contribute to knowledge through research.

*Student completion rate – calculated by dividing the number of students of the university who graduated in a given year by the number of the students in the graduating class.

*Ph.D graduate output for the year.

*Stability of university calendar – it is in an atmosphere of peace and stability that good quality teaching, learning and research can prevail.

*Student of PC Ratio: In an an ICT enabled higher education world, the student-to-PC ratio becomes important. This indicator is given as:

Total No of Computers available to Students X 1000 divided by the Total Number of Students PCs available to students in commercial Internet Cafes were not counted.