Latin ascension

British ranking of universities shows ascension of Latin America. USP climbed 84 spots and is the 169th best in the world. Unicamp leapt to 235th place.

By Fábio de Castro

Agência FAPESP – The performance of Latin American universities has improved dramatically in the 2011 QS World University ranking,  published on September 5. The British ranking highlights the 300 best universities in the world based on six indicators.

Universidade de São Paulo (USP), ranked 169th, rose 84 positions since the 2010 ranking and for the first time is among the 200 best. Unicamp rose 57 spots to the 235th position. Three other Latin American universities appear among the 300 best: Universidade Nacional Autônoma do México (Unam), which climbed from 222nd to 169th position in 2011, tying with USP in first place for the continent. Chile’s Catholic University, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Chile, climbed from 331st to 250th place.  Universidade do Chile, which had been ranked in 367th place in 2010, rose to 262nd.

For the second consecutive year, Cambridge University topped the list, followed by Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale and Oxford. According to Ben Sowter, of Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a company specialized in producing information and statistics on higher education, although the ranking only publishes the top 300,  there are 17 Latin American universities among the 500 best worldwide in Brazil, Argentina, Chile,  Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay. “There are more Latin American universities than ever among the top 500,” Sowter affirms.

Under QS’ methodology, roughly 2,000 universities worldwide are considered and 700 are evaluated based on six criteria for ranking the top 300. “Academic reputation” is the most important criterion,, accounting for 40%. The other criteria are: “citations per faculty” (20%), “faculty student ratio,” (20%),  “employer reputation” (10%), “proportion of international students” (5%) and “proportion of international faculty” (5%).
 
According to Marco Antônio Zago, dean of research at Universidade de São Paulo, the performance of Brazil’s largest university at QS World University is consistent with other rankings published in 2011, such as Webometrics and the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).“In focusing on certain criteria, each ranking measures a specific aspect. But USP rose several notches in all the rankings published so far and we can say that collectively, they highlight a very consistent trend in improving the university’s position. Being among the top 200 is something remarkable,” he said in interview with Agência FAPESP.

According to Zago, USP and Unicamp’s rise follows a trend of improvement in the quality of scientific production throughout São Paulo State. “These results show that science and technology are improving in the state. In addition to the support of FAPESP, universities have invested their own resources in research and in human resource training policies,” he notes.

Another factor that has contributed to the good performance of São Paulo universities, according to Zago, is that the criteria of the QS ranking focuses on advances in university careers and academia, which is linked to merit, not politics. “In São Paulo’s academic circles, the trend is predominantly merit,” he explains.

The QS World University ranking also classifies the performance of the universities in different fields of knowledge. In some of them, USP had an even better performance than it obtained in the general classification, according to Zago. For certain categories, USP is among the 100 best in the world, including Life Sciences and Medicine (70th), Humanities (80th), Exact and Earth Sciences (86th) and Engineering (97th).

“At first glance, it could seem strange that we are among the 100 best in all these categories and only ranked 200 in the general classification. The explanation for this is probably that many universities have a high competence level in a specific area, but are focused exclusively on that area – and as such, end up  being excluded from the ranking by sector,” he explains.

In Life Sciences and Medicine, according to Zago, USP’s excellent performance is explained primarily by the excellence of the São Paulo Scientific community in the area. “It is the area that receives most of FAPESP’s investments – not because of a deliberate Foundation policy, but because of the high existing demand,” he said.

Unicamp, 235th place in the general ranking, is 270th in the Life Sciences and Medicine category, 170th in Arts and Humanities, 152nd in Exact Sciences and 152nd in Engineering.

Academic reputation

According to Ronaldo Pilli, dean of research at Unicamp, in electing “academic reputation” as the main criteria, the QS ranking is biased because it gives priority to the most well-known institutions worldwide. 

“In any part of the world, when you ask an academic what the three best universities on the planet are, he or she will naturally cite Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and other schools with a long tradition. It’s no wonder these top the ranking,” he says.

Despite his reservations, Pilli believes that being among the 300 best universities in the world is something significant for Unicamp. “The most important point for us is the almost 60-point advance in the ranking, which reflects several efforts that we are making at the university, especially regarding qualification of our body of researchers,” he affirms.

The dean also notes that the QS ranking is based on Scopus data to evaluate the quantity of publications linked to each university as means of establishing the “citations per faculty” indicator. “We have a very high number of publications listed on Scopus given the numbers of our faculty. Certainly, these criteria pushed us up in the ranking,” he notes.

Another factor that probably contributed to Unicamp’s climb in several rankings, according to Pilli, is the continuous improvement of information supplied to agencies that produce these classifications.      

“Last year, there were efforts by FAPESP in partnership with São Paulo universities to report investments in research with more propriety and clarity,” says Pilli. According to him, for several years the research budget reported by universities was based only on funding from support agencies.

“In the last year, we started incorporating the percentage of time that researchers are paid by the university for their research work. This has not influenced our QS ranking, which is focused on academic reputation, but has weighed heavily in others, which use the research budget as criteria,” he affirms.

According to him, Unicamp’s ascension in the QS ranking reflects the improved quality of activities and its greater visibility. “This performance also reflects the internationalization activities that are underway at the university and that aim to increase international mobility of graduate to postdoctoral students, as well as faculty,” he affirms.