₦airaland Forum

COVID-19? Who cares? That doesn’t mean anything again. It’s just as normal now as a cold.

You are lazy. If you took a few minutes to do your research instead of asking Grok, you will know that the PM of India, President of Brazil, Chancellor Olaf of Germany and many African Presidents have visited Nigeria in the last 2 years. Are you living under a rock?

olumaxi:
I marvel at the level of poverty that will be existing in North korea....this type of president will careless for his citizens

My brother, Nigeria is not any better. The only difference I see is that Nigerians are free to japa and say anything against their government. In terms of quality of life, most Nigerians are no better than many North Koreans. I will even say in terms of education and technical competence, they are far better than Nigerians, they can build rockets and nuclear facilities. Nigerians can't even build their roads, not to mention bridges.

nairalanda1:
So, how about many African countries who ended up under army rule, are they better than they were before Army rule?

Brazil self, was already developing before army rule took over. Thailand and Indonesia still have high levels of poverty. Spain has developed far more under civillian rule than under the rule of Franco. South Korea, yeah, I'll give you that....but South Korea is developed because it woke up and realized they did not have enough natural resources.

The problem with you guys is that you do not even want to do what South Korea did to be developed. You want a army government that would dash you money well well. And if democracy no dey dash una money, na army you want.

You don't want to do what Park OF korea did...allowed rich families to set up domestic industries that would export in return for them paying limited taxes, and getting government favors. ...meanwhile most of you start screaming oppressor when dangote gets some grant from government or something. And it took ten years of hardship, before the benefits started trickling in. Japan self, Japan took decades before it reaped the benefits of industires. And both korea and japan had large numbers of their people japa when times were hard.

South Africa that has been a democracy self, is better than Nigeria. How do you explain that.

I want tinubu out. But I don't want army rule. Army rule took us from bad in 1983, to worse in 1999. ANd let's not talk about 1966..where in one year time we had a brutal civil war on our hand

As I mentioned above, it is what the leader do with power that matters and not the form. Many African leaders are selfish, clueless and lack foresight. UAE, Qatar, SAudi Arabia, Bahrain etc are all monarch and are doing pretty well. Leaders matter. Also, the quality of life for an average person in Indonesia or Thailand is better than in 98% African counties including South Africa.

I didn’t say democracy is bad, it is good for some countries and terrible for some. In many African countries, democracy hasn't been that great to say the least. This may be because, democracy itself depends on the fact that the people choosing their leaders are expected to be knowledgeable enough to know what is good for them, unfortunately that’s not the case for most people in Africa. Give them N1000 and they will vote for you. Also, democracy itself is varied and takes different form; Singapore is a one-party democracy which is different from those UK or Canada.

I don’t follow Nigerian politics and don’t care. Nigeria is a cesspit of corrupt, clueless and arrogant people. Most of the leaders, no matter what divide they belong, will not change the country in a meaningful way. The mindset in Nigeria is flawed and I don’t see a meaningful change in this generation.

donleo92:
And he is some people's Messiah. Because he is against the west

The worst democracy is way better than military rule

That's my opinion.

People of bukina faso are crying bitterly, but you no go know

.

And how many have died in your country? People dying like chickens every day.

BTW, countries like South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Chile, Brazil, Spain etc all became what they are today because of the foundation left by decade of military rule. It is what the rulers do with the power that matters and not the form. Africans are generally wicked and lack foresight. Even democracy in African is a rouse, a country like Cameroon is considered democracy with the same president since 1982 and hasn’t made any meaningful impact for the country except living like a king and giving the resource of the country to their masters

Wotowotoman:
“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford" - Samuel Johnson

When Samuel Johnson lived in 16th century, London was the center of the world. Great Britain was the world power with a very large empire. Similar to what New York or Shanghai is today. Unfortunately, those are not true anymore. London is just an expensive financial city that is gloomy all the time. It’s no wonder they put so much effort to go colonize and live in other part of world.

Sirhush:
Lol how about people in Nigeria

That’s the real jungle.

The UK keh? People dey live there? Even people in the UK are leaving.

fineboynl:
the us intentionally devalued their currency last year. It fell worldwide

So won’t the devaluation of Yuan, if true, be a great news for China as an exporting country?

…and NO, it not worldwide. Here is India in the same period.

fineboynl:
lol do you know the number of countries that hold on the de Chinese currency?

The reason why china currency’ will never replace the us dollars . For those of you saying the dollar will fall and crash.

This is the strongest Chinese currency have been in over a year

Trump is funny. He can’t do that.

So funny. Trump is getting desperate everyday. He took a gamble that backfire in a spectacular fashion. He knows there is no chance to win this war without internal revolution in Iran. Just do what you can do, save face and save the world from unwarranted economic catastrophe.

CanadaOrBust:
When Israel can pinpoint their leaders and kill them you think they won't know if and where any nuclear activity is taking place.
Besides Iran would be preoccupied just trying to survive
This time is totally different from last time

I believe the only way anyone can stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon will be a ground invasion or internal revolution to dismantle the IRG, any other method is just a waste of time. All the countries that got nuclear weapons including China, India, Pakistan and recently N. Korean did it under the watchful eyes of the world. Iran is more than 90million people, even if US and Israel bomb straight for 10 years without ground invasion or stirring out a revolution, nothing will happen. You may not know much history, between 1964-73, the US dropped more than 2million bombs on Laos (estimated to be about 250 million cluster bombs) which was at then a population of only 2 million people. The bombs were dropped with high intensity at more than 500,000 times, that is, dropping bombs every 8 mins for 24hrs for 9 years. Still they couldn’t achieve any of their objectives because they didn’t do a ground invasion.

CanadaOrBust:
But you'll no longer see them thinking about enriching uranium. That's the point - their capacity to ever develop nuclear will be permanently removed

How is this true? That will only be possible if the US can scatter the IRG network and install a new pro-US government that the Iranians will accept. If not, they will only continue where they stopped after the war. Maybe even faster than before. Remember Trump said they destroyed their nuclear capabilities last summer, it turns out not to be true.

mohims:
The new Ayatollah is next on the list. His elimination is inevitable. All terrorist must die

All this doesn’t really matter. As long as there is no ground invasion, to dismantle Islamic group leading the country or an internal revolution that remove their network, I don’t thing anything much will be achieved. Just like nothing much has been achieved in Nigeria with BK even after Yusuf or Shakau were killed. There are many of them.

Antoeni:
Maybe Dangote is Pained Over The Death Of Ayatollah

Price of crude oil was $70 per barrel last week, today it is around $94 and still climbing.

Omalicious1:
When are going to start pushing for other countries to do business with us in our own currency?

That’s exactly what this is

stanlink:
Supporting Iran from the back do abi?

What does this have to with Iran?

uniquetechng:
What happened to the much celebrated Naira-Yuan deal signed by Buhari's administration ?

I believe that was $2 billion and it is term bound. I don’t think China will accept $10 billion swap. Why will they?

Slippy:
Why can’t you focus on building local capacity instead of treating foreign investment like the achievement itself?

Even China restricted foreign investment in key industries and forced joint ventures and tech transfer so local firms could grow. Major reason Chinese companies can compete with Western counterparts.

APC government cares only about the $$$ attached to foreign capital (whether they materialize or not) so they can celebrate it as an achievement with their deluded followers.

What are you talking about? How do you build capacity? Do you have the technology? Does Nigeria have the money to do anything? Nigeria is a very poor country; it has very little. Foreign investment is what a country needs to kick-start the economy, build industries, create jobs, and develop the necessary skills.

China was very poor until it opened up its economy to the world. That is why almost all American and Western companies are in China, producing and selling. They brought in capital and know-how, and China provided the labour. After some time, China grew, learned, and innovated on those ideas and can now compete. India did not do the same, and they are left behind and still very poor.

Investment does not have to be 100% foreign in a project; Nigeria can also structure it as a joint venture (JV). Lekki Deep Sea Port is a JV built by Chinese entities, the Nigerian government, and the Lagos State government. Nigeria LNG is a JV involving Shell, Eni, and the Nigerian government. The Lekki Free Trade Zone is another example.

Chinese companies can help develop our energy infrastructure (generation, transmission, and distribution). They can also develop new wells for gas and oil exploration that major companies are divesting from. They can build refineries and vehicle assembly plants to serve Nigeria and other West African countries. Nigeria needs these types of investments to build a resilient economy and create jobs. We can't do these all by ourselves.

I don't know much about Nigerian politics, and I don't really care.

Slippy:
Replacing Western colonialism with Chinese version

Black people are a special case

What are you saying? So foreigners shouldn't come and invest in Nigeria?

Slippy:
Lol China enjoys substantial trade surplus with nearly all African countries.

they can afford to waive tariffs and still have a trade surplus

China takes Africa's natural resources at below market prices through bribery and outright theft.

This is just PR for their low IQ anti-western supporters

If China is running a trade surplus with African countries, the common-sense approach is for African nations, like Nigeria, to boost their exports to China. Think for yourself, African man! It is easy. Why do you think countries like Canada, UK, Germany, France, etc., keep going to China? It's an enormous market.

omoredia:
If e no be US it can never be like US. Can we japa to China and enjoy life like US? Abegi

See thinking of human being. Nigerians’ IQ should be one of the lowest of the lows. Instead of thinking of something you can produce that can be exported to China to make money without tariff, you are here looking for excuses. China don’t want you n their country, they are not an immigration country and the have their problems to deal with. US don’t want people like you either.

hotwax:
It's very realistic.. but gulf Arabs nation don't want it.

They feel Iran is the only thing keeping Israel in check.

Israel will be too powerful in the middle east...and Arabs don't like it.

Turkey has been the 1 country pushing for dialogs.

Turkey does not want a powerful Israel.

Arabs benefit from Israel coming to beg them against Iran.

If USA unleashes its weapons against Iran, Iran won't last a night. It's more of politics

It may not be that easy. The US tried it in the past and it didn’t end well. The U.S. actions in Iranian history, especially the 1953 coup, helped create political conditions that indirectly contributed to the Islamic Revolution that eventually brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his clerical supporters to power in 1979. Many people in Iran, especially the young people are secular and would like to get out of the shackles of the Ayatollah’s, but there are many people who won’t want a US puppet as a leader.

Trump is just a bully. He’s bullying countries that allows him. Carney should just continue to ignore him.

omoredia:
China is Nigerian new colonial masters. People that lack wise leaders will always be slaves

Could you please advise us on what should have been done if you think an investment such as this is slavery? China is one of the largest importer of gas and you have gas to sell and they are even investing in the development. May be I’m missing something.

DoTheNeedful:
I read the article a couple of days ago, and I am not impressed by it.

China and the Chinese people are the most intellectually dishonest people in the world and that didn't start today. They fake their way up.

In my experience, research papers from many institutions in China often raise concerns about transparency and reproducibility. They are notorious for faking experimental results, and reluctant to provide insightful details about their methods. In many cases, the results are not reproducible. When you are lucky to reproduce their ideas using the descriptions provided in their papers, the results you obtain are usually different from what were stated in their papers.

By contrast, I generally feel more confident in research work from universities in the US, Germany, France, UK, Canada, Australia, South Korea and Japan than any from the Chinese universities.

An interesting portion in article posted by the op is quoted below:



Obviously from the quoted article, Chinese researchers are intentionally citing themselves in order to boost their citation rankings. Citation rankings is one of the most important metric for ranking universities and research institutions in the world. What the Chinese are doing is to manipulate this metric in their favor.

The Chinese are very good at studying any system and finding ways to game such system. With all the hype around China today, there are hardly any groundbreaking and revolutionary technological idea coming out from there. They are only good at making incremental and cosmetic improvements to original ideas coming from US, Europe and Japan. They also spend a lot of cyberattack effort on stealing ideas from research institutions and companies in the West, Japan and South Korea.

I would rather have my Children study at Harvard than Zhejiang University. Even the Chinese president's child graduated from Harvard. In fact, when Trump recently wanted to ban students from China from studying at the top US universities, the Chinese president had to quickly step in.

You have some valid points, but China’s research landscape is evolving rapidly, and their output is remarkable. You can say what you want, but the fact is that their recent research achievements are undeniable and ignoring them won’t change reality. Take biotech and drug development, for example. In 2003, China accounted for only about 3% of clinical trials and drug testing. By 2025, this has risen to roughly 40%. According to Goldman Sachs, China represented 46% of all drugs entering human trials last year( source: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/china-is-increasing-its-share-of-global-drug-development). Chinese drug makers also signed 157 out-licensing deals with global pharmaceutical firms, generating a record $136 billion (https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/abbvie-remegen-partner-experimental-solid-tumor-treatment-2026-01-12/?utm_source=chatgpt.com). Achievements like this require substantial and meaningful research.

In AI, while the US still holds a leading role, Chinese researchers are increasingly influential, in many cases doubling their output between 2019 and 2024 (see image below. Even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently noted that about 50% of AI researchers are Chinese, many of whom studied undergraduate programs in China before pursuing graduate studies in the US. China is also leading in other technologies inclduing in robotics, battery development, nuclear power, metal refining, metal additive manufacturing, and more. In solar energy, Chinese advancements have improved both efficiency and manufacturability, making it far more accessible.

Yes, China is starting from a lower base, especially in “0-to-1” research, and there is still catching up to do, especially with the US. But like it or not, the investment and progress China has made in education and research over the past 10–15 years are incredible. You can dismiss some of these efforts as mere replication, but the reality is that the research landscape in many STEM fields will look very different in the next 10–20 years. The shift has already begun, and it’s impossible to ignore, as captured in this article by C.S. Wagner. (Source: https://quincyinst.org/research/chinas-historic-rise-to-the-top-of-the-scientific-ladder/#)

dederocs:
You are talking nonsense that defies facts on ground... Dangote has been selling cheaper than importers...is that not why importers were complaining that Dangote want to drive them out of business?

Have you not been in Nigeria or just talking for sake of it...is it not since Dangote came on that fuel started coming down?

Dangote is producing at large scale, his refinery is one of the biggest in the world, Dangote even export. All you said is fallacy and fiction.

Calm down. As I mentioned above, my comment wasn’t specifically about Dangote, it was referring to Nigerian general manufacturing industry. Nigeria cannot base the viability of its industries on the price of imported products. For example, imagine if China decided to sell steel below production cost and flood the market with it just to keep its steel industry running and its people employed. If Nigeria, or any other country, tried to base the viability of its steel industry on such prices, local companies would inevitably go bankrupt.

Regarding Dangote, who knows if they are selling below market price to gain market share, which is clearly unsustainable? The question I keep asking is: why is PMS in other West African countries at least double what you guys pay in Nigeria? Are they doing you guys a favour, are other countries cheating their people, or are Nigeria simply importing cheaper, lower-quality PMS with little or no regulation? I don’t know.

FYI, aside from the significant increase in local offtake in November and December, Dangote supplied less than 40% of Nigeria’s daily PMS consumption, with the majority still being imported. Dangote is likely exporting the excess that wasn’t taken locally, mainly because imported PMS, which is cheaper and possibly of questionable quality, dominates the market.

JuanDeDios:
Local products being more expensive is not justifiable in my view. Labour is cheaper here. Far cheaper. Dangote refinery is one of the largest in the world - so what scale are they lacking? They're producing the energy they use, so what cost exactly are they dealing with?

Okay, I wasn’t talking specifically about Dangote, but about our general manufacturing ecosystem. You can’t base the viability of your industries solely on imported prices. If you do that, it’s a recipe for disaster, many companies will go bankrupt and will be unable to compete. Take industries like rice production, steel, and textiles. There is no realistic way to produce these cheaper than imported products. Even breweries operating in Nigeria benefit from a 20% tariff; otherwise, Guinness would just import bulk Stout, much like P&G is now doing after closing its local manufacturing base.

Labour is not the only factor determining the final cost of manufacturing. There are many other factors. For example, China’s labour costs are at least 3× higher than India’s, yet goods can still be cheaper in China. That’s why many manufacturers still prefer to set up in China. it’s about scale, supply chain efficiency, and quality, not just labour.

Regarding Dangote, they operate one of the largest single refineries in the world, with an installed capacity of 650,000 bpd. While impressive, this is still small compared to companies producing 2–5 million bpd across multiple refineries. Also, many of Dangote’s engineers are still expatriates due to the limited pool of experienced refinery engineers in Nigeria. Building local expertise will take time. One factor i consider critical is the quality of imported products. Imported gasoline may be cheaper, but the quality is often lower than what is produced domestically. Importers may sell at a lower price because the product doesn’t fully meet Nigerian standards. We've heard that there are no standard testing facilities to ensure compliance, so anything go. Consider this, why is the price of PMS in Nigeria at least 50% cheaper than in other West African countries even without subsidies? Are other countries cheating their people, or are they simply holding a higher quality standard? I don’t know. Is Dangote making money on PMS, or selling below cost to gain market share? Again, I don’t know.

What I expect from government policy is to ensure that both importers and indigenous companies adhere to the same standards, and that Dangote and other domestic producers are able to cover production costs with a reasonable margin, so their operations are sustainable in the long term.

Until recently, Harvard was the most productive research university in the world, according to a global ranking that looks at academic publication.

That position may be teetering, the most recent evidence of a troubling trend for American academia.

Harvard recently dropped to No. 3 on the ranking. The schools racing up the list are not Harvard’s American peers, but Chinese universities that have been steadily climbing in rankings that emphasize the volume and quality of research they produce.

The reordering comes as the Trump administration has been slashing research funding to American schools that depend heavily on the federal government to pay for scientific endeavors. President Trump’s policies did not start the American universities’ relative decline, which began years ago, but they could accelerate it.

“There is a big shift coming, a bit of a new world order in global dominance of higher education and research,” said Phil Baty, chief global affairs officer for Times Higher Education, a British organization unconnected to The New York Times that produces one of the better-known world rankings of universities.

Educators and experts say the shift is a problem not just for American universities, but also for the nation as a whole.

“There is a risk of the trend continuing, and potential decline,” Mr. Baty said. “I use the word ‘decline’ very carefully. It’s not as if U.S. schools are getting demonstrably worse, it’s just the global competition: Other nations are making more rapid progress.”

Look back to the early 2000s, and a global university ranking based on scientific output, such as published journal articles, would be very different. Seven American schools would be among the top 10, led by Harvard University at No. 1.

Only one Chinese school, Zhejiang University, would even make the top 25.

Today, Zhejiang is ranked first on that list, the Leiden Rankings, from the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Seven other Chinese schools are in the top 10.

Harvard produces significantly more research now than it did two decades ago, but it has nonetheless fallen to third. And it is the only American university still near the top of the list. Harvard is still first in the Leiden rankings for highly-cited scientific publications.

The issue at top American universities is not falling production.

Six prominent American schools that would have been in the top 10 in the first decade of the 2000s — the University of Michigan, the University of California, Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins, the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford University — are producing more research than they did two decades ago, according to the Leiden tallies.

But production by the Chinese schools has risen far more.

According to Mark Neijssel, director of services for the Centre for Science and Technology Studies, the Leiden rankings take into account papers and citations contained in the Web of Science, a database set of academic publications which is owned by Clarivate, a data and analytics company. Thousands of academic journals are represented in the databases, many of which are highly specialized, he said.

Global university rankings generally have not attracted much popular attention in the United States. Even so, some experienced academics are seeing the growth in research production from China that the rankings reflect, and are warning that America is falling behind.

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Rafael Reif, a former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said on a podcast last year that “the number of papers and the quality of the papers coming from China are outstanding” and are “dwarfing what we’re doing in the U.S.”

Institutions in other countries around the world, by contrast, are watching the global rankings, seeing them as a measure both of academic prowess and of their progress in overtaking the United States. Zhejiang University displays its rankings prominently on its web page, and lists among the milestones in its history when it broke into the top 100 globally in 2017. Chinese state media has celebrated the ranking rise of the country’s universities.

The center at Leiden has begun producing an alternative ranking that is based on a different academic database, called OpenAlex. Harvard is No. 1 in that ranking, but the trend is the same: 12 of the next 13 schools on the alternative list are Chinese.

“China is really building a lot of research capacity,” Mr. Neijssel said. At the same time, he said, Chinese researchers are putting more emphasis on publishing in English-language journals that are more widely read — and cited — around the world.

President Xi Jinping, in a speech in 2024, praised his country’s advances in fields such as quantum technology and space science. He cited a breakthrough by researchers at Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, who developed a method to synthesize starch from carbon dioxide in the lab, which could possibly lead to industries making food from the air, without needing acres of plants dependent on land, irrigation and harvesting.

Other ranking systems that are weighted toward scientific output reflect a similar shift toward Chinese institutions.

Harvard is No. 1 globally in the University Ranking by Academic Performance, compiled by the Informatics Institute of Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. But Stanford University was the only other U.S. school in the top 10, which includes four Chinese universities. Another ranking, the Nature Index, placed Harvard first, followed by 10 Chinese schools.

Harvard and other leading U.S. universities face a fresh set of stressors from the Trump administration’s cuts to science grants, as well as from travel bans and an anti-immigration crackdown that has swept up international students and academics.

The number of international students arriving in the U.S. in August 2025 was 19 percent lower than the year before, a trend that could further hurt the prestige and rankings of American schools if the world’s best minds choose to study and work elsewhere.

China has been pouring billions of dollars into its universities and aggressively working to make them attractive to foreign researchers. In the fall, China began offering a visa specifically for graduates of top universities in science and technology to travel to China to study or do business.

“China has a boatload of money in higher education that it didn’t have 20 years ago,” said Alex Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates, a Toronto education consulting company.

Mr. Xi has made the reasons for the country’s investments explicit, arguing that a nation’s global power depends on its scientific dominance.

“The scientific and technological revolution is intertwined with the game between superpowers,” he said in a speech in 2024.

President Trump’s administration has taken the opposite tack, aiming to cut billions of dollars in research grants for U.S. universities.

Trump officials have argued that the cuts are meant to eliminate waste and reorient research away from themes of diversity and other topics that they see as too political.

The Trump administration did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

A White House spokeswoman, Liz Huston, has said in the past that “the best science can’t thrive in institutions that have abandoned merit, free inquiry, and the pursuit of truth.”

University leaders in the United States warned throughout 2025 that reductions in federal research grants could have devastating effects.

Harvard established a web page to catalog the types of scientific and medical research that would be interrupted by grant cuts. The American Association of University Professors and several legal allies filed suit to contest some of the cuts. The group’s president, Todd Wolfson, warned that research cuts would “stunt the development of the next generation of scientists.”

A federal judge has ordered the federal government to resume funding for Harvard, after the Trump administration cut off billions of dollars in research funds in the spring. The administration has said it would curtail future grants to the school.

A Harvard spokesman declined to comment.

The prestige and global standing of many other U.S. universities are also in jeopardy. Fewer and smaller federal grants means less research, and by extension, potentially fewer discoveries to be written up and published in academic articles and papers, which will affect how schools fare in future rankings.

Research universities make it part of their mission to pursue discoveries and develop new knowledge. Faculty members are often under pressure to produce results, summed up in the phrase “publish or perish.”

Schools that do not aspire to produce reams of academic research papers, such as many liberal arts colleges, would not figure on production-based rankings. Mr. Neijssel said the Leiden rankings “do not pretend to say anything” about the quality of teaching at a university.

Top U.S. schools have fared much better in ranking systems whose criteria are broader than just academic output. Some give weight to factors such as a school’s reputation, finances, and how badly students want to enroll, as reflected in its application acceptance rate. Some even take into account the number of Nobel Prize winners on the faculty.

These broader rankings may be slower to change, experts say, though they still show signs of the erosion of American supremacy in higher education.

For 2026, and for the 10th year in a row, Times Higher Education in Britain ranked Oxford University the No. 1 university in the world. The rest of the organization’s top five included the same schools as last year: M.I.T., Princeton, the University of Cambridge, and then Harvard, tied with Stanford.

American schools held seven of the top 10 spots in the 2026 ranking. But farther down the list, American universities are slipping. Sixty-two U.S. schools were ranked lower than last year, while only 19 rose.

Ten years ago, two prominent Beijing schools — Peking University and Tsinghua University — were ranked 42nd and 47th in Times Higher Education’s list. Now they are just below the top 10: Tsinghua was ranked 12th, and Peking 13th.

Six schools in Hong Kong are now in the top 200; South Korea placed four in the top 100.

While some foreign schools have risen, some well-known American schools have slipped. Duke University, for instance, was ranked 20th in 2021, and now is ranked 28th. Over that same time span, Emory University dropped to 102nd from 85th. Ten years ago, Notre Dame ranked 108th; now it is No. 194.

The pressures that could reduce Harvard’s research output, like federal grant reductions and cuts to the school’s Ph.D. programs, are unlikely to show up immediately in rankings, said Mr. Usher, the higher education consultant.

“If you’re looking at how many articles end up in ‘Nature’ or ‘Science’ from that institution, that is based on research that started four or five years ago,” he said. “There is a pretty serious time lag. I wouldn’t expect that to have a big impact in the next few years.”

While China is thriving in disciplines like chemistry and environmental sciences, the United States and Europe remain dominant in others, like general biology and medical sciences. And a study has suggested that Chinese researchers have been boosting their citation rankings by citing one another more often than western researchers tend to cite other westerners.

University rankings are an old phenomenon, dating back to the early 20th Century, according to Alan Ruby, senior fellow and director of global engagement at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

Students often use rankings to help them decide where to apply, and academics use them as guides to where to work and conduct research, he said. Some governments use them in doling out research money, and some employers see them as a tool for quickly sorting large numbers of entry-level job candidates.

“If you’re trying to attract the best talent in the world, be it students or researchers or faculty, you want to have that signaling power of, ‘We’re a highly ranked institution,’ ” Mr. Ruby said.

Beyond marketing, rankings matter because the quality of universities matter, according to Paul Musgrave, a professor of government at Georgetown University’s campus in Doha, Qatar. It can be difficult to draw a direct line between good universities and national power, he said, but “on the other hand, we all know that when the Germans wrecked their universities in the 1930s it probably hurt them in a lot of ways.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/us/harvard-global-ranking-chinese-universities-trump-cuts.html

dawnomike:
Importers will have no choice but to align eventually... We must support local production that fuels our economy and provides employment opportunities.

We can only hope Dangote will not turn up price on us later on.

The problem is that many products imported will be cheaper than the locally produced. This is due to their scale of production, infrastructure development and matured supply chain that affects the cost of production. If Nigeria wants to base the survival of local industries on cost of imported substitutes, that will be a disaster.

vanbonattel:
Just listen to yourself!

If she has been paying this high VAT, why is she now crying out loudly?

Some people just support evil because it's done by their people.

VAT has not changed, it the same 7.5%. She would have paid the same amount a year ago.