The University of Ilorin’s passionate drive for academic excellence has again paid off, as its Faculty of Engineering has been adjudged the best in the country.

This verdict was handed down recently by the renowned University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) in its 2013-2014 Field Rankings.

Established in 2009, URAP is one of the research laboratories at the Graduate School of Informatics, Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey. Its main objective is to develop a ranking system for the world universities based on academic performances, which is determined by quality and quantity of scholarly publications.

The URAP ranking system, which ranks the top 2,000 higher educational institutions across the globe on academic performance and excellence, also placed the University of Ilorin at the 1,244th position in the world.

In a letter informing the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Prof. AbdulGaniyu Ambali (OON), of the development, the Director of URAP, Prof. Nazife Baykal, said that the exercise was carried out using six academic performance indicators. These are: the Number of Articles, measuring current productivity; Citation, measuring research impact; Total Document, measuring the sustainability of scientific production by quantifying all scholarly literature including conference papers, reviews, letters and discussions; Article Impact Total, measuring scientific impact which is derived by aggregating the impact factors of journals in which a university published articles; Citation Impact Total, measuring the received citation quality, which is based on the impact factors of journals where the cited articles are published; and International Collaboration that measures the global acceptance of a university.

Prof. Baykal explained that “URAP ranking system is completely based on objective data obtained from reliable bibliometric sources”, adding that its major focus is academic quality.

The Director stated further, “The goal of the URAP ranking system is not to label world universities as best or worst”, stating that the intention “is to help universities identify potential areas of progress with respect to specific academic performance indicators.”

Reacting to the ranking, the Dean, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Prof. Y. Jimoh, said, “It is an achievement that calls for more hard work, more commitment and better focus”.

In a chat with Unilorin Bulletin, Prof. Jimoh said that all these are necessary for the Faculty to sustain the feat, adding that “the common saying that ‘it is easy to get to the top but tough to remain at that top’ means that we have to be more competitive.”

The Dean said, “This achievement cannot be accomplished without the support of the University management team under the leadership of our Vice-Chancellor, Prof., AbdulGaniyu Ambali, as well as the crop of staff in the University and the Faculty of Engineering in particular.

“I wish that other programmes within the University of Ilorin shall have the same rating as time goes on, not only with this system but other types of ranking system globally. We are happy and we pledge that we will continue to win more laurels for this University.”

Also last year, the University of Ilorin was adjudged the best in Nigeria, 20th best in Africa and 1,842nd in the world in the 2014 University Web Ranking conducted by the International Colleges and Universities (4ICU). The 4ICU is an international higher education search engine and directory that constantly reviews accredited universities and colleges across the world. For that exercise, it ranked about 11,307 colleges and universities by web popularity in over 200 countries.

Also, statistics released by the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) last year affirmed the University of Ilorin as the most subscribed University by admission seekers in the country with a total of over 105,000 candidates seeking admission to the institution in the 2014/2015 academic session.