The University of Cape Coast (UCC) has maintained its position as the best university in the country and the first in West Africa in the 2024 Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings (WUR).
The Cape Coast-based University was also adjudged as among the 10 best universities on the African continent by placing seventh to six South African universities.
Among the six South African universities are; the University of Cape Town, Stellenbosch University, University of the Witwatersrand, University of Johannesburg, University of KwaZulu-Natal, and the University of Pretoria.
In the 2022 and 2023 rankings, UCC was adjudged as the best in Ghana, best in West Africa, fourth in Africa, and the world’s foremost university for research influence.
The top five universities in the world according to the 2024 THE WUR rankings are; University of Oxford, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and University of Cambridge.
The 2024 rankings by the WUR were based on a new 3.0 methodology, which appraises institutions by looking at standardised performance indicators in five key areas namely: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry engagement, and international outlook.
Addressing a news conference in Cape Coast on Wednesday, the Vice Chancellor of UCC, Prof. Johnson Nyarko Boampong, explained that the 2024 World University Ranking (WUR) had data submissions from 2,673 institutions across 108 countries out of which 1,904 universities qualified to be ranked.
“The annual THE WUR is the only global university rankings league table to judge research-intensive universities based on their five core missions,” he said.
He indicated that, despite the sudden change in the methodology, the University of Cape Coast emerged as a strong institution of higher learning in this year’s rankings.
“The THE WUR data are used by governments, universities and are vital resources to aid students in choosing their preferred tertiary institutions to study,” he said.
The achievement in the rankings, he said, demonstrated the reputation of the scholarly research outputs of UCC, particularly over the past decade, saying, “By this feat UCC has also demonstrated its contribution to higher education and the impact of its scholarly outputs in Ghana, Africa and globally”.
The director, Directorate of Research, Innovation and Consultancy (DRIC) of UCC, Prof. David Teye Doku, in his remarks, noted that the change in the methodology could not be used to compare performance of universities to that of the previous year.
“You cannot use different methodology to compare two things. What we are concerned is to find out if we have improved overall compared to last year on all the parameters that were also measured last year and the answer is yes,” he said.
He indicated that, the position of the university was a good result but was quick to add that the management of UCC and faculty would work on areas that the university did not perform well to ensure a better result next year.
FROM DAVID O. YARBOI-TETTEH, CAPE COAST
