Brasil domina el Ranking de Universidades Latinoamericanas 2024

La Universidad de São Paulo ha pasado del segundo al primer puesto en la región, y Brasil ocupa ahora siete de los 10 primeros puestos, incluidos los tres primeros.

La Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile ocupa ahora el cuarto puesto. La Universidad de Chile se mantiene en el noveno puesto, y el Tecnológico de Monterrey de México ha bajado del cuarto al séptimo compartido.

En total, 32 de las 69 instituciones brasileñas clasificadas han mejorado su posición en la tabla. Parte de la razón del éxito de Brasil son los cambios en la metodología del ranking, que ahora ofrece una imagen más precisa de la calidad de la investigación de las universidades.

Por primera vez, el Ranking de Universidades Latinoamericanas incluye tres métricas para rastrear la calidad de la investigación: fuerza de la investigación, que se basa en el percentil 75 del impacto de las citas ponderadas por campo; excelencia investigadora, que mide el volumen de investigación en el 10% superior de la investigación mundial; e influencia investigadora, que mide la influencia (en términos de citas) de los artículos citados. Anteriormente, el impacto de las citas ponderadas por campo era la única medida del éxito de la investigación.

Ranking de Universidades Latinoamericanas 2024: top 10

Claudio Rama, academic director of the Universidad de la Empresa in Uruguay, said that Brazil has long been stronger in research than the rest of the region: “Public universities [in Brazil] are focused on research, unlike the rest of Latin America, which is focused on education.” The country has more funding for research and robust incentives and standards that encourage quality research, he added.

This year, 44 Brazilian institutions have improved their rank in the research quality pillar. The University of São Paulo now ranks first in the region for research quality, up from 38th last year. The University of Campinas is now third, up from 42nd, and Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul is now sixth, up from 28th.

Simon Schwartzman, a Brazilian social scientist and author of A Space for Science: The Development of the Scientific Community in Brazil, said Brazil had a “federal system for graduate education and university research without parallel in Latin America”.

The state of São Paulo was especially strong for research, Professor Schwartzman said. The state provided “strong support to the three state universities and [a] well-endowed research agency, FAPESP, to support it. São Paulo is the richest region in the country, with a strong tradition of autonomy regarding the national government,” he said.

However, “on the negative side, there is a tendency, in the federal system, to spread the resources thin…The consequence is that Brazilian science has a ‘long tail’ with a few universities and research departments – starting with the universities of São Paulo and Campinas – concentrating most of the scientific production.”

Edson Cocchieri Botelh, pro-rector of research at Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp), a state university in São Paulo, agreed that the autonomy afforded to the state universities was key to their success, and put them in a “much more comfortable situation” than the federal universities that have more government oversight. “For sure, we should improve a lot of things, but I believe that the ideology of this model is very convenient for us,” he said.

Another factor in Brazil’s strengthening university system is the change in governmental support for academia since Jair Bolsonaro lost the presidency in October 2022. Many universities were left unable to pay for basic necessities as a result of budget cuts during Mr Bolsonaro’s term and university lecturers and professors had seen their pay frozen since 2016.

In the first year of his current term, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – known as Lula – gave academics a 9 per cent wage increase and upped the funding for master’s and PhD scholarships.

However, Professor Schwartzman said that while there was no longer the hostility to science and education that was present under the Bolsonaro government, challenges remain.

“The current government is much more favourable but along populist lines, distributing the resources thin and not having well-articulated research and innovation policies,” he said.

rosa.ellis@timeshighereducation.com

Fuente: Times Higher Education         Latin America University Rankings 2024