The two Brazilian universities are the only South American universities that have a . are included in global reputation ranking Produced by the British publication Times Higher Education (The) and published this Wednesday (27).
a University of So Paulo (USP) It is the best Brazilian in the ranking, sharing a position of 81 to 90 with other foreign universities.
The University of Campinas (Unicamp) was ranked between 151 and 175.
Both improved their performance in 2020 compared to the same ranking: USP moved up ten places and Unicamp, five this year.
Unlike the traditional Times Higher Education Ranking, which ranks international universities according to their learning environment, the amount of research and citations they receive, and technology transfer within the university environment, the prestige rankings published on Wednesday take into account only academics’ opinion. holds. Which they consider to be the best university in the world in terms of teaching and research.
According to The, 10,900 “experienced and published” academics in 29 countries were interviewed.
“this is a quite subjective ranking: Distinguished academics are asked to cite universities they think are doing well, which have visibility at conferences, in the production of studies and in the media,” said Phil Batty, representative of BBC News Brasil’s THE Says. “But it is opinion informed by people who know what they are talking about.”
Batty points out that, although Brazilian universities have improved from 2020 to 2021, they are not on an upward trajectory. “The prestige ranking is in its 11th edition, and the USP, for example, has already reached a position between 61 and 70”, he says.
The top five universities are from the US and UK: Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Oxford, Stanford and the University of Cambridge, respectively.
“Reputation is a powerful currency for universities, playing a vital role in building reputation and attracting student talent, academic talent, new partnerships, and even inward investment,” Batty says.
Overall, the US stands out with 57 of the 202 universities listed in the prestige ranking, followed by the United Kingdom (25) and China (17).
By the way, progress in the reputation of Chinese universities has attracted the attention of observers: for the first time, a Chinese higher education institution—Tsinghua University—was in the top 10 of the rankings.
“Mainland China is the greatest example of ranking success, showing that its universities are developing into an international reputation for their research and teaching among their global peers,” The statement read.
According to Phil Batty, this progress could “change the balance of power in international higher education in the coming years, as mainland China becomes more attractive to academics and students”, with an impact on talent retention as well as on investment distribution. Too. International research.
Other countries with better reputations are Germany (14), Japan (11), the Netherlands (9), Australia, Canada and France (6 universities each).
Apart from the Brazilian USP and UniCamp, the only Latin American to appear in the ranking is the National Autonomous University of Mexico, which ranks between 176 and 200.
