One of the showcase goals of Liberia’s current national development plan is the achievement of “Top 300 in Africa” status for a Liberian university by 2029. The University of Liberia as the nation’s flagship university certainly has that goal in its sights. But has anybody really wondered what it will take to get there??
I did a little research myself, looking up several of the top global university ranking systems (QS World University Rankings, Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Academic Ranking of World Universities, and UNIRANKS) and also a well-respected one from the United States (U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges). What criteria do they use? And what does these criteria mean for higher education institutions in Liberia, most especially the University of Liberia??
The criteria that these ranking systems use generally fall into four categories: 1) faculty quality, 2) student success variables, 3) campus reputation variables, and 4) infrastructure and facilities categories. A few systems also add a fifth factor: student and employee well-being. Let’s break these down a little bit further.
Faculty quality encompasses such variables as faculty publications, faculty research dollars, faculty awards and prizes (for scholarship or research), citations of faculty research in other publications, percentage of full-time faculty relative to part-time faculty, faculty salaries (against peer institution benchmarks), and overall quality of faculty as judged by their own educational credentials and the quality of the journals or presses where they publish their work.
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Student success variables include such things as entrance test scores, student retention rates, faculty-to-student ratios (average class sizes), graduation rates (percent of incoming students who ultimately graduate), time-to-graduation (how many years students spend before graduating, on average), financial resources-per-student (based on a mathematical formula), the percentage of students who get jobs after graduation, the quality of the employers where these students get jobs after graduation, and the average salaries of graduates from the institution.
Campus reputation covers such things as financial strength, overall faculty reputation, reputation of standout departments or programs (especially international recognition of such programs), internationalization in general (the ability to attract international students, faculty, and partners to the institution), quality of institutional partnerships and donor funding, and how long the institution has been continuously functioning (usually dated from establishment date). Clean audits across multiple years are also a reputation variable, as is the absence of scandals and other reputational negatives. Lastly, there is usually also a peer assessment component to reputation: How do peer institutions rate our institution?
Infrastructure and facilities variables encompass such factors as condition and beauty of buildings and grounds, technological quality of buildings (especially classrooms and labs), quality of libraries, quality of sports and recreation facilities, and the environmental sustainability of campus facilities (e.g., renewable energy, energy conservation, waste management and recycling, and campus biodiversity preservation).
Finally, student and employee wellbeing covers the provision of services for physical and mental health and the degree to which the institution provides programming that addresses the “whole person.” This might include things like good medical insurance, available mental health counseling, personal fitness classes and facilities, programs for creative expression (arts, music, dance, theatre, etc.), personal development workshops (e.g., financial literacy, public speaking, leadership development, or soft skills), or multifaith programming. It might also include such factors as robust policies to encourage social inclusion of women and people with disabilities, and to prohibit and prevent things like sexual harassment, SGBV, and bullying – along with related accountability measures for violators.
Lately, many people have been questioning the kinds of changes I have made or am proposing for UL. The public, the politicians, and UL’s own students and employees can rest assured that all the actual or proposed changes have the long view in mind: a complete upscaling of UL’s reputation – a reputation that will not just look good on paper, but will actually be backed by a rock-solid reality. Such a reputational advance will benefit Liberia’s students and faculty and, ultimately, all Liberians.
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It is no secret that UL needs to improve its academic quality, raise the bar of academic excellence, increase the proportion of faculty with advanced degrees from reputative institutions across all its departments and programs, vastly improve its infrastructure, reduce the number of optical negatives (such as protests, strikes, property damage, physical violence, academic fraud, financial malfeasance, and quid pro quo transactions), and increase the number of optical positives (gender equality, disability inclusion, standout programs, faculty research, and student success stories). The world is watching and our would-be ranking organizations are also watching. How do we want to show up?
A Liberian university that achieves the Top 300 in Africa ranking will put Liberia back on the higher ed map in the West African subregion and, ultimately, across the continent and around the world. I hope – indeed, it is my plan – that UL will be that institution!
