Professor Jonathan Moyo’s take on Zim universities and their absence from global rankings.
Tellingly, and worryingly, universities in Zimbabwe that don’t feature at all in the overall world university rankings include all of them minus the University of Zimbabwe:
Africa University
African Women University
Arrupe Jesuit University
Bindura University of Science Education
Catholic University of Technology
Chinhoyi University of Technology
Great Zimbabwe University
Gwanda State University
Harare Institute of Technology
Lupane State University
Manicaland State University of Applied Sciences
Marondera University of Agricultural Science & Technology
Midlands State University
National University of Science and Technology (NUST)
Reformed Church University
Solusi University
Zimbabwe Ezekiel University
Zimbabwe National Defence University
Zimbabwe Open University.
This is awful. Something is wrong here, and it needs to be corrected as a matter of urgency, in the national interest.
What is going on?
Too many good for nothing universities with nothing to write home about to justify their existence as institutions of higher learning and advanced research. These universities must shape up or ship out. Universities that do not leave up to the minimum standard of performance have no right to exist, they should be deregistered.
Situations or circumstances that are arresting advanced research at Zimbabwe’s institutions of higher education — for them to stand up and be counted among the world’s best — do not require rocket science to understand.
Consider the following:
Firstly, there’s no public funding of research. Zimbabwe will not industrialise nor modernise without a knowledge based and knowledge driven economy. Put differently, Zimbabwe will not become an upper middle income country without a knowledge based and knowledge driven economy.
Still in other words, vision 2030 is impossible to achieve without such an economy. Conversely, you cannot have a knowledge economy when there’s no public funding of knowledge generation at the country’s institutions of higher education through advanced research.
Secondly, Zimbabwe’s universities are principally and notoriously text-book based, higher education teaching institutions; they are yet to transform into higher education research institutions whose strategic purpose is not to teach from textbooks but to teach from the generation of knowledge — intellectual property — through advanced research. This transformation will not happen unless and until there’s requisite public funding of advanced research at the country’s universities commensurate with societal needs.
Thirdly, public funding of advanced research at universities should not only come from the state but it should also from the private sector. Zimbabwe’s private is not known for the pursuit of excellence or for funding the creation of patented intellectual property at institutions of higher education for the betterment of lives and livelihoods as part of their business models. Far from it. In Zimbabwe business is synonymous with making predatory profits in the crudest of ways. What have the likes of Innscor, Delta, Econet and Old Mutual done for the pursuit of excellence or knowledge generation in Zimbabwe? What is their relationship with institutions of higher education in the country?
As if this is not bad enough, in Zimbabwe you get people who style themselves as leading business tycoons whose sense of philanthropy is to donate vehicles or give money to individuals who should be making their own money to buy themselves cars or whatever, and who do not do anything for society or any community.
This kind of philanthropy is nothing but nauseating corruption.
Otherwise, take a look the philanthropy that is practiced in enlightened societies, there’s no better philanthropy than supporting research and development at institutions of higher education.
Fourthly, Zimbabwe’s institutions of higher education themselves, are their own worst enemies. Witness how many of them are busy competing with primary schools making mazhanje juice or competing with polytechnics doing basic reverse engineering projects on things like tram concepts — claiming to be building innovation hubs — when they’re supposed to be doing advanced research to generate ground breaking intellectual property to produce fresh engineering solutions to community and societal problems.
It is plain wrong and even intellectually criminal to celebrate such embarrassing mediocrity as innovation.
Fifthly, and last but not least, public discourse in Zimbabwe is never about ideas; it’s always about personalities, about good guys and bad guys — praising some and cancelling out others — and never about good ideas and bad ideas. This explains why there’s no fact-checking culture in Zimbabwe, and why public debate is not evidence based. It’s invariably about mumbo jumbo politics.
Truth be told, it is very difficult and even impossible for institutions of higher education to thrive in a society whose public discourse is about good guys versus bad guys; and not about good ideas versus bad ideas. This rot is totally unacceptable!
Link: World University Rankings 2025
timeshighereducation.com/world-universi…
