1. Dr Nico Cloete University of Stellenbosch, CREST 7 February 2018
ASSAf Presidential Roundtable: Science, Scholarship and Society University Rankings: Helpful or Harmful?
Dr Nico Cloete
University of Stellenbosch, CREST
7 February 2018

2. Rankings in Africa: Important, interesting or irrelevant?
Hazelkorn: Global Rankings and the Geopolitics of Higher Education (Routledge, 2017)
Impact on the production of knowledge and its geography
Significance in different regions of the world
The role that rankings are likely to play in the future direction of HE
2. For Africa chose three HERANA related ‘case’ studies:
Gerald Ouma, University of Pretoria: Rankings contribute to efforts to redefine the university, increase output and move out of apartheid isolation – getting the feel of the game
Patrício Langa, Eduardo Mondlane University: Empower the institution to make strategic decisions about increasing research and to negotiate a different position in the HE system)
Florence Nakayiwa, Makerere University: Rankings contribute to increasing resources, internal reforms and reputation)
3. Interesting how institutions use rankings, irritating when your institution does not feature and important for stimulating change.

3. Shanghai rankings 2015: developing-country universities
Country groupings
1-100
East Asia and the Pacific 10 9 19 8
Eastern Europe and Central Asia
Latin America and the Caribbean 2 1
Middle East and North Africa
South Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa
Total 12 13 20 14
Source: Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)

4. Shanghai: University reform in China
“In education, there is no distinction between classes of men.” (Confucius [500 BC]) “HE increasingly stands out as the strongest driver of stratification of the society.” (Jingyi, 2004)
Economist Tang Min: “Higher education enrolment expansion will turn out to be a measure that entails less state investment, stimulates domestic consumption greatly and satisfies the urgent demand from the masses.”
Massification and differentiation – key and non-key; ‘211’ project in 1995; ‘985’ in (118 institutions designated for world-class status. In 2017, 42 universities designated for ‘Double First Class’ status and 90 universities for specialist disciplines.
Three principles:
High tuition to increase investment in HE and to spur consumption
Large-scale loan systems to help poor students – Rural Credit Cooperatives (10-15 year pay-back) and China Development Bank
Increased scale of scholarship (30 world-class universities)
Trade-off: High: Government spending (3.5% GDP) – mass – private
Resulted in the fastest expansion of HE in history. From PhDs in 1978 to in 2008 (40% in STEM). China is distorting the global high-skills labour market.
In 2000, China had 9 universities in the top 500, by 2016 it had 44 (2 in top 100).

5. Inequality/ Economic growth
Trilemma of trade-offs and effects on growth and inequality
Enrolment
Inequality/ Economic growth
Public investment
Private cost

6. Trilemma of trade-offs: Norway, China, SA & Africa (2015)
Source: Busemeyer (2015). Graphic by CHET/Francois van Schalkwyk.

7. HERANA Indicators for research-oriented universities
INPUT GOALS
INPUT TARGETS 1
A substantial proportion of student enrolments must be in major fields of study in SET (including health & clinical sciences)
For enrolments:
at least 40% to be in SET
no more than 30% of enrolments to be in BUS
no more than 30% of enrolments to be in SSH 2
A university’s teaching must be focused on both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, with strong proportions in post- graduate programmes
No more than 75% of student enrolments in undergraduate programmes with 25% postgraduate enrolments:
masters 15%
doctorate 5% 3
A high proportion of academic staff must be in senior rank categories and be well qualified (doctorate)
For permanent academic staff at least:
60% professor, associate professor or senior lecturer
60% should hold doctoral degrees 4
Favourable student to academic staff ratios in all fields of study
Average ratio of FTE students to FTE academics
SET: at most 15:1
BUS: at most 25:1
SSH: at most 25:1 5
Doctoral supervision capacity must be high
Ratios of supervisor to candidate:

8. HERANA Indicators for research-oriented universities
OUPUT GOALS
OUTPUT TARGETS 6
Outputs of masters and doctoral graduates must be high
Postgraduate graduates in given year to be:
25% of total masters enrolments
15% of doctoral head count enrolment 7
New knowledge production by academic staff in the form of doctoral graduates must be high
Annual ratio of doctoral graduates to total permanent academic staff to be at least 0.15 8
New knowledge production in the form of research publications must be high
Annual ratio of research publications to total permanent academic staff to be at least 1.0

9. University publications Total publications for the country
Relative share of African universities to national research output: WoS publications
Universities
Country
University publications
Total publications for the country
University %
University of Botswana
Botswana
2 074
3 397
61%
University of Cape Town
South Africa
23 209
17%
University of Dar es Salaam
Tanzania
2 499
9 411
16%
Eduardo Mondlane University
Mozambique
768
1 956
39%
University of Ghana
Ghana
3 761
8 586
36%
Makerere University
Uganda
5 146
9 263
56%
University of Mauritius
Mauritius
858
1 311
65%
University of Nairobi
Kenya
3 191
17 893
18%

10. Journal articles published in WoS 2000-2015
Makerere
Ghana
Nairobi
Botswana
Dar es Salaam
Eduardo Mondlane
Mauritius

11. Publications, Qualifications and Capacity