Why African varsities must be ranked on ICT investment

By Standard Reporter

So, your university is ranked first, or 40th, or 698th? So what? Why the obsession with being at the top of the pile? Why do humans compete in order to be ranked one way or the other? Where is the vanity or specialty of pride of place? Granted higher education is very highly valued in Kenya, we must ask, whether the ranking of various institutions is following the proper criteria.

Indeed, is a superb degree qualification not an end in itself? So many questions. So many variants. So many treatises.

The bottom-line, however, is that ratings are a universally accepted phenomenon to gauge quality and competitiveness; separate the men from the boys, as common parlance goes. the varied needs of consumers of intellectual knowledge, sponsors, manufacturers, researchers, and service providers have spawned a need to differentiate and make more economical/effective/efficient management decisions.

And in making the best possible mix between available hardware, software, and now “humanware”, is what sets apart an enterprise from the crowd. And for universities —the springboard to the “real world” — ranking is a key indicator.

The difference will lie in the type of module used to compare one against the other and depends on factors such as: institution’s vision, goals and objectives; weight put on research; depth and capacity of its management and faculty; admissions criteria and focus (i.e. is it medical, engineering, business or arts-focused).

Others considerations would be the facilities available like library depth and reference material, desired learning objectives/outcomes, prevailing government policy, community service bent, sponsorship, peer-reviewed research papers and financing.

“These should form the basic framework for comparison. But reality shows that the 21st Century has been a historic turning point,” says Dann Mwangi, Director with CPS International, a social and marketing research firm. “The world’s engine of growth of choice is Information and Communication Technology (ICT)...No product, innovation, procedure or transaction can today claim to be truly independent of some ICT component or process. ‘Gut feeling’ no longer cuts it. Face it, even your grandma, village-based cousin, workmate, cobbler or local kiosk owner is today the proud owner of a mobile phone. Why then can’t universities be ranked according to how firmly they have hitched their horse to the ICT bandwagon?” Mwangi poses.

Market-based

Last week at during a keynote address by Commission for Higher Education Prof. David Some at Management University of Africa on varsity ranking: “In the development of a ranking or rating system, therefore, the focus should not only be on evaluating universities or programmes alone, rather it should be more holistic.”

“I implore you to consider research on ranking particularly in regard to the means by which rankings can contribute a market-based perspective which can complement the work of accreditation agencies.”

“As we deliberate on the modalities of enhancing linkages between industry and higher education, it is important for us to take stock of our efforts, where necessary consolidate and complement them,” Prof Some told the hallowed congregation.

In the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings, only three South African universities — University of Cape Town, University of Witwatersrand and University of KwaZulu-Natal — were on the list 400 best world universities.

Other African universities were conspicuously absent. How then would potential students assess them for quality if they were not among their peers.

That is why it calls for a more objective ranking system.

Just-in-time apps

In engineering Computer-Aided Design (CAD) is applied for design of most bridges, buildings, roads and automobiles. Computer-Aided Manufacture (CAM) started way back in the 1980s when Japan inculcated Just-In-Time applications that ensured shorter lead times, better inventory management, and enormous time and cost savings.

Today, South Koreans are so immersed in IT that even teaching has very little direct student-teacher-by-blackboard link. Almost everyone has a computer, iPhone, tablet iPad or other gadget that processes billions of bytes of information in seconds.

In the competitive global environment, ICT has been used to cut costs through precision instrumentation, better product differentiation and databases that power the process by cutting the time it takes to sift through loads of information and make snap decisions.

The Gautrain project in South Africa is an engineering masterpiece that did not rely on trial-and-error excavations to determine where to pass the high-speed rail that runs 15 storeys underground. Through geomatics engineering deploying modern imaging techniques, and Global Positioning technology, they were able to blast at just the right places and depths, make infills in sedimentary rock hollows that would otherwise have collapsed the project at inception.

Secondly, food security is the goal of any society today, just as it was for the pharaohs of Egypt. Farmers and commodity traders need to have information on planting and rainfall cycles, availability of certified seed, water management, transportation matrices, storage, safety and markets.

Databases on weather and climate, animal health tracking using microchips enables precision farming. And what better way to ensure this than by inculcating ICT in agriculture-dedicated university coursework?

Thirdly, advances in health have seen a quantum leap from witchdoctors’ river stones and cowrie shells to Space Age biotechnology that have slashed years of belaboured research and development to better co-ordinated medical care, state-of the-art imaging and diagnosis as well as laser and nanotechnology applications for surgical procedures.

Robotics and stem cell research have taken surgery to new frontiers so that even those suffering limb and tissue damage can now move again using biometric limbs like South African Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius is, who has two below-knee amputations. Also, teleconferencing applications software has made nonsense of distance as a factor in life-saving operations.

And on matters of health, governments and service providers are enjoying the vast databases and e-health applications available at the touch of a button to cut costs and integrate service over wider geographical areas.

Litigious society

Again, what better way to prepare future doctors, nurses and other practitioners for this evolving workplace than ensure an ICT-intensive university curriculum!

Aspiring students and parents would find information on the quality of university if the ranking were done on the depth of ICT invested.

In an increasingly litigious society as citizens become more discerning, better educated and aware of their fundamental rights and freedoms, the legal system, too, has found itself locked in an embrace with ICT.

Lawyers and courts first found ICT useful in cataloguing tome upon tome of case law, billing, case and client scheduling.

But with time, storage of legal data digitally has seen acres of sprawling office space and bookshelves incongruent as relevant info can be stored in tablets or flash disks and can be made available, literally, at the fingertips.

In Kenya, judicial clients, police, researchers, and students today will tell you that the Kenya Law reports portal is an invaluable Internet address. Case law, precedents, judicial decisions, whole country constitutions are available online for immediate consultation.

How else do you prepare people for such a workplace and courtroom if it is not introduced at university level? Almost no facet of human endeavour remains untouched by ICT. It is imperative university rankings be made on the strength of their investment in ICT. That is not to say any other system is wrong.

No! The others are subjective and not marketplace-oriented. They have served well over the decades to rate universities as repositories of academic excellence, but what use is a degree if you still have to sit some coursework in ICT in order to attain relevance?

“The dialogue will assist all stakeholders in understanding the fact that the information schemes (ranking and rating) are learning systems that are continuously being refined. In the development of a ranking or rating system, therefore, the focus should not only be on evaluating universities or programmes alone, rather it should be more holistic...It should also be an interrogation of the ranking processes,” Prof Some says in part.