The Best Universities in Ghana – 2021 Ranking

1 Rakings – Frequently Asked Questions

The following are some typically asked questions regarding the Ghana Universities rankings, and how they are compiled;

2 Explaining the rankings

If you wondered why certain universities do not rank as you expected, the following could be helpful in understanding the rankings;

1. University Category:

CSIC ranking is the largest ranking by the number of HEIs analyzed, but there is no classification of the different institutional types, so research-intensive universities are listed together with community colleges or theological seminaries. However, the rank segregates all of them so it is not difficult to build sub-rankings for those interested.

2. University missions:

The direct measurement of teaching mission is virtually unfeasible and those evaluations are based on surveys (subjective), ratios of students/scholars (data unreliable and results not segregating), or employment results (with many variables involved other than the quality of teaching) should be avoided. CSIC’s ranking ranks indirectly this mission using web presence as an indicator of the commitment of the scholars to their students. It is not perfect but the future of this mission is clearly in the web arena and any institution or individual not realizing that is losing ground very fast.

3. Big numbers.

The quality of the data does not only depend on the source used, but also on the numbers involved. For example, the number of universities with more than one Nobel Prize is probably lower than 200 (including all of those granted since 1900) which makes it very difficult to rank them correctly.

The same applies to citation data, the most powerful bibliometric tool that is providing figures in the order of thousands and tens of thousands. The link data offer far larger big numbers, usually two or even three orders of magnitude larger. Certainly, the web indicators are noisier but statistically, they are better suited for uncovering patterns and discriminating a larger number of institutions.

4. Size-dependent.

There is no debate about this issue: The most popular rankings, including this one, are size-dependent, although size does not refer to a number of scholars or students (like GIMPA and NAFTI are not large in that sense) but probably to resources (current funding, past funding reflected in buildings, laboratories or libraries). But this criticism is not correct as really none of the rankings are really measuring efficiency but global performance.

5. Bad naming practices

University managers are still fighting for convincing their authors to assign the correct affiliations in scientific publications. The situation is not far better on the Web with several hundred institutions having more than one central web domain, preserving active old domains, using alternative domains for international (English) contents, or sharing domains with third parties. Even among those universities with only one domain, many of them change the domain frequently, sometimes without any apparent good reason for doing that.

A strange relatively common situation is when those changes are for transferring a national top-level domain to a “.edu” domain, even when though Ghana has a clearly defined academic subdomain (edu.gh). These changes and, especially the preservation along the time of several domains, penalizes very severely in university ranking. But of course, it is also a very misleading practice that decreases the web visibility of the universities. Probably it has not so strong an effect on local populations, but it is really confusing for the global audiences.

6. Fake and non-accredited universities.

The list tries not to include fake institutions, checking especially online, international, and foreign branches if they have independent web domains or subdomain

Do you think your university deserves a better ranking on this list? Or do think any of these institutions does not deserve its ranking? Why do you think any university should or should not be on this list? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section below

3 Universities in Ghana – 2021 Ranking

The following table is a ranking of all 68 universities in Ghana accredited by the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC). The table also shows the location of the university;