Covenant University (CU) has emerged as Nigeria’s top-ranked university in the Times Higher Education (THE) 2024 World Rankings. The university outperformed other Nigerian institutions, including traditional powerhouses like the University of Lagos (UNILAG) and the University of Ibadan (UI).
The THE World Rankings, a globally recognised assessment of universities, evaluated institutions across 108 countries based on factors such as teaching quality, research environment, research output, industry engagement and international outlook.
Covenant University’s strong performance in these areas propelled it to the top of the Nigerian rankings.The 2024 rankings featured a total of 1,907 universities worldwide, with Covenant University and UI placing within the 8001-1000 range.
This achievement underscores the university’s growing reputation and commitment to academic excellence.The ratings were done based on 18 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across five areas: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry, and international outlook.
This year’s ranking analysed more than 134 million citations across 16.5 million research publications and included survey responses from 68,402 scholars globally.“Overall, we collected 411,789 datapoints from more than 2,673 institutions that submitted data,” THE said.
The University of Oxford tops the ranking for the eighth year in a row, but others in the top five have seen shifts in their ranks. Stanford University moves up to second place, pushing Harvard University down to fourth.The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) climbs up two places to third this year. The University of Cambridge slips to fifth place, after being in joint third place last year.
Top 10 ranked universities globally
University of Oxford, UK
Stanford University, US
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US
Harvard University, US
University of Cambridge, UK
Princeton University, US
California Institute of Technology, US
Imperial College London, UK
University of California, Berkeley US
Yale University, US
Top 10 ranked Nigerian universities
Covenant University
University of Ibadan
Federal University of Technology Akure
University of Lagos
Bayero University
University of Ilorin
University of Nigeria, Nsukka
Afe Babalola University
University of Benin
Federal University ofAgriculture, Abeokuta
See full list here