JKUAT rose at the expense of Strathmore, Egerton and Moi universities which lost ground to rank 67, 80 and 143, respectively, in Africa according to the latest study by Spanish research firm Webometrics.
The study, which was released on Thursday shows that University of Nairobi went up two spots to rank 12 while Kenyatta University jumped 11 positions to number 30 in Africa. The previous ranking was in July last year.
“The improved ranking regionally is proof that our efforts in increasing research volume and impact and improving the institution’s visibility in terms of staff profiles, courses offered and facilities are paying off,” said Kenyatta University Vice Chancellor Olive Mugenda.
Last year, Strathmore was third in Kenya and 37th in Africa, Moi was fourth and at position 48 on the continent followed by Egerton University at number 80 in Africa.
The ranking is important for universities in terms of international recognition and branding, which in turn attracts students, faculty and research grants.
The Webometrics study assesses 11,997 universities globally and positions are awarded based on how well they adopt modern research, teaching, and academic publishing methods and how easily this information is accessible online.
Half of the ranking points are tallied from the “visibility” of a university’s website where the assessors inspect the number of external visits it gets.
The other points come from an institution’s level of “activity,” taking into account the number of web pages hosted on the main site, the number of research repositories available and how many academic papers are published on acclaimed international journals.
South Africa scooped the first eight positions in this year’s Africa rankings, making them the country to beat.
Stellenbosch University, University of Cape Town and University of Pretoria took the first three positions while Harvard University, Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology were ranked top in the world in that order.
Dr Edward Mungai, a senior lecturer at Strathmore Business School, cautioned that care needs to be exercised when analysing these rankings since they “do not represent the holistic review” of any institution.
“Ranking of universities is important but doing so using the level of visibility on the Internet could be erroneous,” said Dr Mungai, who is the former SBC dean.
“The question is how valuable is this ranking when weighted against other more tangible aspects of an institution.”
A low ranking of Kenyan universities compromises competitiveness of Kenyan graduates in the global labour market. It also means a lower prestige for the local institutions on the international stage, slowing down scholarly partnerships and funding from the top league universities and donors.
Source :Business Daily.
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