The University of Ilorin’s passionate drive for academic excellence has
again paid off, as its Faculty of Engineering has been adjudged the best
in the country.
This verdict was handed down recently by the renowned University Ranking
by Academic Performance (URAP) in its 2013-2014 Field Rankings...
Established in 2009, URAP is one of the research laboratories at the
Graduate School of Informatics, Middle East Technical University (METU),
Ankara, Turkey. Its main objective is to develop a ranking system for
the world universities based on academic performances, which is
determined by quality and quantity of scholarly publications.
The URAP ranking system, which ranks the top 2,000 higher educational
institutions across the globe on academic performance and excellence,
also placed the University of Ilorin at the 1,244th position in the
world.
In a letter informing the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin,
Prof. AbdulGaniyu Ambali (OON), of the development, the Director of
URAP, Prof. Nazife Baykal, said that the exercise was carried out using
six academic performance indicators. These are: the Number of Articles,
measuring current productivity; Citation, measuring research impact;
Total Document, measuring the sustainability of scientific production by
quantifying all scholarly literature including conference papers,
reviews, letters and discussions; Article Impact Total, measuring
scientific impact which is derived by aggregating the impact factors of
journals in which a university published articles; Citation Impact
Total, measuring the received citation quality, which is based on the
impact factors of journals where the cited articles are published; and
International Collaboration that measures the global acceptance of a
university.
Prof. Baykal explained that “URAP ranking system is completely based on
objective data obtained from reliable bibliometric sources”, adding that
its major focus is academic quality.
The Director stated further, “The goal of the URAP ranking system is not
to label world universities as best or worst”, stating that the
intention “is to help universities identify potential areas of progress
with respect to specific academic performance indicators.”
Reacting to the ranking, the Dean, Faculty of Engineering and
Technology, Prof. Y. Jimoh, said, “It is an achievement that calls for
more hard work, more commitment and better focus”.
In a chat with Unilorin Bulletin, Prof. Jimoh said that all these are
necessary for the Faculty to sustain the feat, adding that “the common
saying that ‘it is easy to get to the top but tough to remain at that
top’ means that we have to be more competitive.”
The Dean said, “This achievement cannot be accomplished without the
support of the University management team under the leadership of our
Vice-Chancellor, Prof., AbdulGaniyu Ambali, as well as the crop of staff
in the University and the Faculty of Engineering in particular.
“I wish that other programmes within the University of Ilorin shall have
the same rating as time goes on, not only with this system but other
types of ranking system globally. We are happy and we pledge that we
will continue to win more laurels for this University.”
Also last year, the University of Ilorin was adjudged the best in
Nigeria, 20th best in Africa and 1,842nd in the world in the 2014
University Web Ranking conducted by the International Colleges and
Universities (4ICU). The 4ICU is an international higher education
search engine and directory that constantly reviews accredited
universities and colleges across the world. For that exercise, it ranked
about 11,307 colleges and universities by web popularity in over 200
countries.
Also, statistics released by the National Universities Commission (NUC)
and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) last year
affirmed the University of Ilorin as the most subscribed University by
admission seekers in the country with a total of over 105,000 candidates
seeking admission to the institution in the 2014/2015 academic session.
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