Ranking das universidades: USP e Unicamp depois de 232...

Melhores universidades do mundo estão nos EUA
MARCOS FLAMÍNIO PERES
Folha de S.Paulo, 16/09/2010

Não é só mito, mas estatística: Harvard é a melhor universidade do mundo, os EUA, sozinhos, abrigam 15 das 20 melhores instituições de ensino do planeta, e é dinheiro, muito dinheiro, que move essa engrenagem.

Essas são algumas das conclusões do Ranking Mundial de Universidades 2010-11 da Times Higher Education, referência em ensino superior que a Folha publica com exclusividade no Brasil.

OPINIÃO: Nova versão do ranking se baseia em detalhadas consultas internacionais
DEPOIMENTO: Em Harvard, você é só um grão de areia em boa companhia
Na América Latina, USP é a 1ª colocada em ranking

A crise financeira de 2008 parece não ter provocado estrago nos campi dos EUA. Entre as 200 instituições que figuram no ranking, mais de um terço é de norte-americanas (72).

A receita é simples, segundo Ann Mroz, editora da THE: "Os EUA investem 3,1% de seu Produto Interno Bruto em educação superior, enquanto os demais países da Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômico investem 1,5%".

FORÇA ASIÁTICA
Em sua sétima edição, o ranking também revela a forte presença das asiáticas. Entre as 50 melhores, o continente possui sete --China (2), Hong Kong (2), Japão, Coreia do Sul e Cingapura-- e, nessa faixa, já bate a Europa continental: Suíça (2), França (2), Alemanha e Suécia.

No entanto, se for incluído o Reino Unido, a balança pende para a Europa. A ilha detém quatro das 50 melhores universidades, três delas entre as dez primeiras (Cambridge, Oxford e Imperial College). Levando-se em conta o ranking completo, o Reino Unido (com 29) e Europa continental (com 51) disparam.

No total, as asiáticas somam 27 --China (6), Japão (5), Taiwan e Coreia do Sul (4 cada uma) são os destaques.

Já as instituições dos países de língua inglesa, somadas, dominam 120 posições --ou 60% do ranking (Canadá --nove-- e Austrália --sete-- vêm em seguida).

Na Europa continental, a surpresa foi a Alemanha. Com 14 instituições, o motor econômico da região também lidera o ensino superior. O país "investiu 18 bilhões de euros em pesquisa nos últimos cinco anos", afirma Mroz.

A França decepcionou: figura apenas em quinto.

NOVOS CRITÉRIOS
A versão 2010-11 do ranking da THE passou por ampla reformulação --a começar da compiladora dos dados, que é a Thomson Reuters. Mas a mudança mais radical, segundo Mroz, foi de metodologia: "Usamos hoje 13 indicadores, em vez dos seis usados anteriormente [...] e ouvimos 13.388 acadêmicos altamente qualificados, de todo o mundo".

O critério de reputação também teve seu peso reduzido. "Privilegiamos mais as evidências objetivas --e não as subjetivas."

Colaborou EMILIO SANT'ANNA, de São Paulo

[A USP está no lugar 232 e a Unicamp em 248)

Ranking de universidades: latinas abaixo da critica

Se alguma, alguma vez, em algum momento futuro, for colocada na lista das 200 melhores do mundo, pode ser uma boa coisa, mas isso refletirá, provavelmente, o desempenho de algumas áreas científicas de uma ou outra tomadas isoladamente, o que obviamente não reflete o estado geral de descalabro universitário.
Acho que ainda vai demorar um bocado para termos, como a Austrália, sete entre as 200 melhores...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

The World University Rankings
The Times, 16th September 2010

Comentário: Nenhuma universidade sul-americana está listada entre as 200 melhores do mundo na listagem do Times Higher Education. A Universidade de Buenos Aires, a USP e a UNICAMP são candidatas a serem incluídas nas “top 200” na região. A análise abaixo, com ênfase no caso brasileiro, mostra o quanto de caminho há que percorrer para atingir a excelência... Para os interessados vide o endereço:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/ - como medida de comparação, a Austrália tem 7 (repito sete) universidades na lista da melhores do mundo.

The goals will come
By Phil Baty

Unlike their football teams, South America's universities have not made a global splash. But Brazil looks likely to score some big successes soon.

The continent of South America does not have a single institution in the Times Higher Education list of the world’s 200 top universities.
And those institutions most likely to break into the elite list, according to one expert, are hampered by a number of obstacles in their climb to the top.
“Latin America has several serious challenges on the road to developing world-class universities,” says Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, US.
“The main contenders are the continent’s great public universities such as the University of Buenos Aires. These are, however, saddled with cumbersome, bureaucratic and sometimes politicised governance structures. They rely mainly on part-time faculty – and part-timers can never be the basis of a research university. They are also under-funded and most are unable to charge tuition fees to their students.”

But there are undoubtedly bright spots, he says. “Perhaps only in the Brazilian state of São Paulo can there be world-class universities. Its two main universities are staffed by full-time faculty who hold doctorates, and the universities have a significant research mission and adequate funding from the state.”

Indeed, the University of São Paulo was very close to making it into the table of the top 200 institutions for 2010-11 – as revealed in data from the Times Higher Education World University Rankings iPhone application, which includes information on more than 400 institutions.
The iPhone rankings app also reveals that the State University of Campinas and São Paulo State University are also sitting just outside the top 200.

In his 2009 book The Challenge of Establishing World Class Universities, Jamil Salmi, tertiary education coordinator at the World Bank, highlights both the potential of and the challenges at the University of São Paulo.
It is the most selective institution in Brazil, he writes, and it has “the highest number of top-rated graduate programmes, and every year it produces more PhD graduates than any US university”.

But he laments: “At the same time, its ability to manage its resources is constrained by rigid civil service regulations, even though it is the richest university in the country.

“It has very few linkages with the international research community, and only 3 per cent of its graduate students are from outside Brazil. The university is very inward-looking.”

Salmi tells THE that there have been many positive developments in the region. He highlights the establishment of accreditation systems in most of its countries, and the development of student loan systems in Brazil, Chile and Colombia.

However, he also outlines the challenges: low public investment in higher education, hidebound governance structures, a paucity of international exchange programmes and links, predominantly monolingual campus cultures and a “lack of long-term vision for the development of higher education”.

But Andreas Schleicher, head of the indicators and analysis division at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Directorate for Education, says that for some countries in the region, “there have been very interesting recent developments” that may soon have an impact on the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

“While for most OECD countries spending per student has continued to rise since 2000, countries such as Brazil and Chile have seen much faster rises in participation than [rises in] spending levels,” he says.
Spending per student in Chile has dropped by 25 per cent and by 15 per cent in Brazil – “and yet, the labour-market returns to higher education seem to be picking up.
“In Brazil, the earnings advantage of tertiary graduates over secondary school graduates is now over 263 per cent, well above the figure for any OECD country. The figure for the US, which is high by OECD standards, is 177 per cent.

“It is hard to say to what extent supply or demand factors play into this, but these data may suggest that quality is improving.”
And the continent appears poised for a much greater profile in world-class research in some key fields.

A Global Research Report on Brazil by Thomson Reuters, the data supplier for the World University Rankings, identifies Brazil as a dominant force in a new pack of “Latin tigers” – including Mexico and Argentina.

The report says that Latin America’s share of the world’s scientific papers rose from 1.7 per cent in 1990 to 4.8 per cent in 2008. In 1981, about 2,000 papers had an author address in Brazil. In 2008, the figure was about 20,000.

“The most striking feature of the new geography of science is the sheer scale of investment and mobilisation of people behind innovation that is under way, driven by a high-tech vision of how to succeed in the global economy,” the Thomson Reuters report says.

Brazil, which has a population of 190 million, spent £8.4 billion on research and development in 2007: this equates to roughly 1 per cent of gross domestic product – well ahead of many European nations.
Each year, the country produces more than 500,000 new graduates and about 10,000 new PhD researchers, the report says, representing a 10-fold increase in 20 years.

It is in the life sciences that Brazil is most impressive.
Between 2003 and 2007, the country published about 85,000 papers, which accounted for 1.83 per cent of all the papers published in journals indexed by Thomson Reuters.

But Brazil accounts for almost 19 per cent of the global share of research papers in tropical medicine, and more than 12 per cent of those in parasitology.

In its report, Thomson Reuters warns: “Brazil is an increasingly important and competitive research economy. Its research workforce capacity and R & D investment are expanding rapidly, offering many new possibilities in a rapidly diversifying research portfolio. Brazil’s profile, improving excellence, size and interface with the rest of the international research base make it an essential partner in any future international research portfolio.”

Universidades europeias desgostosas com o seu ranking

De fato, existem muitos critérios pelos quais podem ser avaliadas as universidades, alguns sendo muito subjetivos, como por exemplo, saber que tipo de grande contribuição à elevação cultural ou "espiritual" da humanidade são dados por cursos de letras, de filosofia ou de artes (música, artes plásticas, etc).
A maior parte dos rankings universitários se baseia em critérios objetivos -- artigos publicados e citados, patentes extraídas, prêmios Nobel ou outras atribuições, etc. -- pois os critérios subjetivos, ou qualitativos, não encontrariam consenso entre todos os aferidores.
Como o "produtivismo" das universidades americanas as coloca nos primeiros lugar, as universidades européias reclamam do viés, mas em lugar de reclamar, elas deveriam estabelecer seus, ou outros, critérios, e discutir os indicadores com os especialistas da área.
Elas podem tentar propor um critério que valorize, por exemplo, quão mais agradável é comer camembert na mensa universitária, em lugar de hamburguer e batata frita (que eles também tem), ou tomar vinho, em lugar de refrigerante. Em todo caso, critérios são critérios, e os chineses estão jogando o jogo ao estilo americano. Pode não ser o melhor, mas parece que é o único, até agora, que deu resultados tangíveis em favor da humanidade (nas ciências médicas e biológicas, por exemplo, ou na física e na química).
Os europeus também contribuem, mas seu ritmo é mais lento e irregular. E existem muitos prêmios Nobel dados a europeus que trabalham nas universidades e laboratórios americanos. Em lugar de reclamar, os europeus deveriam se interrogar por que.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Europeans claim bias in college rankings
Qian Yanfeng and Wu Yiyao
China Daily, 17/08/2010

SHANGHAI - An annual Chinese ranking of the world's top 500 universities, which was dominated by educational institutions from the United States, has stoked criticism from Europe for using criteria "biased" against European schools.

European institutions were outnumbered by their US counterparts in the annual ranking compiled by Shanghai Jiaotong University's Center for World-Class Universities (CWCU).

The US retained its commanding position on the list, with eight schools in the top 10 and 54 in the top 100, while only two European schools made the top 10 and 33 were in the top 100.

Harvard University continued to top the ranking for the eighth successive year, followed by Berkeley, Stanford and MIT.

The highest-ranking institution in the UK was the University of Cambridge in fifth place, followed by the University of Oxford at number 10 on the list.

European media reacted strongly to the ranking, saying it had failed to accurately reflect an institution's overall performance by "focusing almost entirely on a university's achievements in scientific research", AFP reported.

First released in 2003, the Shanghai list uses criteria such as the number of staff and alumni who have won Nobel prizes and Fields medals, the number of researchers who are highly cited and the number of articles published in nature and science magazines.

Times Higher Education, a London-based magazine that publishes an annual supplement ranking the top 200 world universities, said on its website that the Shanghai list is based "almost entirely on scientific research", whereas it uses a sophisticated and transparent method to compile its own annual list.

Cheng Ying, executive director of CWCU, conceded there are "shortcomings" in the ranking's methodology, which does not lend sufficient weight to an institution's performance in the humanities.

But he said it is a technical problem, since it is much more difficult to assess an institutions' performance in the humanities than in scientific research.

Cheng also said the list is designed to compare the performance of Chinese universities and their overseas counterparts, in order to help the country create more world-class universities.

In that sense, he added, it was never intended to be used as an index for Chinese students who want to compare different institutions before they go abroad to study.

1465) Academic Ranking in Social Sciences

According to Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Available at: http://www.arwu.org/ARWUFIELD2009SOC.jsp

Academic Ranking of World Universities in Social Sciences - 2009

Methodology | Statistics

World Rank Institution* Country Score on Alumni Score on Award Score on HiCi Score on PUB Score on TOP Total Score
1 Harvard University
100 53 100 100 88 100
2 University of Chicago
71 100 79 74 100 95.0
3 Stanford University
29 33 89 74 94 80.1
4 Columbia University
58 72 58 79 84 80.0
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
96 53 56 60 95 78.3
6 Princeton University
71 63 64 57 92 77.6
7 University of California, Berkeley
50 57 61 79 84 77.4
8 Yale University
71 40 57 65 90 73.9
9 University of Pennsylvania
0 28 74 79 88 72.0
10 New York University
0 32 49 75 95 66.1
11 University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
0 0 63 81 89 64.8
12 University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
41 26 36 70 86 62.5
13 University of California, Los Angeles
41 0 40 74 85 59.7
14 Northwestern University
0 0 56 67 91 59.5
15 Carnegie Mellon University
65 36 28 41 88 57.1
16 University of Cambridge
58 64 16 63 64 56.7
17 Duke University
0 0 46 65 91 56.3
17 University of Maryland, College Park
0 32 32 68 83 56.3
17 University of Oxford
41 20 28 75 71 56.3
20 The University of Texas at Austin
0 0 51 69 82 56.2
21 Pennsylvania State University - University Park
0 0 43 70 87 55.5
22 University of Wisconsin - Madison
0 0 43 71 82 54.5
23 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
0 0 40 67 87 54.0
24 University of California, San Diego
0 32 38 47 84 52.5
25 London School of Economics and Political Science
29 0 28 72 76 52.2
25 The Ohio State University - Columbus
0 0 36 69 83 52.2
27 Arizona State University - Tempe
0 23 28 62 82 51.8
28 University of Washington
0 0 32 67 85 51.2
29 University of British Columbia
29 0 28 61 79 50.1
30 Cornell University
41 0 16 67 79 49.7
31 Washington University in St. Louis
0 28 23 51 88 49.6
32 Michigan State University
0 0 28 68 81 49.1
33 Indiana University Bloomington
0 0 28 67 78 48.2
34 The Johns Hopkins University
50 0 23 43 87 48.1
35 Vanderbilt University
0 0 40 53 79 47.5
36 University of Southern California
0 0 28 61 81 47.2
37 University of Rochester
0 0 43 36 90 47.0
38 McMaster University
41 0 28 42 80 46.1
39 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
0 0 23 68 74 45.9
40 Boston University
0 0 34 52 77 45.4
41 University of California, Davis
0 0 16 53 92 44.8
42 George Mason University
0 47 16 48 66 44.0
43 Brown University
0 0 32 39 86 43.9
44 Emory University
0 0 16 47 93 43.4
44 Georgetown University
0 0 16 54 86 43.4
44 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick
0 0 32 52 71 43.4
47 University of Pittsburgh
0 0 23 52 80 43.3
48 Dartmouth College
0 0 23 35 97 43.1
49 University of Arizona
0 0 16 53 85 42.7
49 University of Colorado at Boulder
0 0 23 49 81 42.7
49 University of Iowa
0 0 16 49 89 42.7
52-75 California Institute of Technology
41 0 23 31 77
52-75 Florida State University
0 0 16 60 73
52-75 McGill University
0 0 23 47 70
52-75 Purdue University - West Lafayette
0 0 16 52 72
52-75 Rice University
0 0 16 35 87
52-75 State University of New York at Albany
0 0 28 45 77
52-75 Tel Aviv University
0 0 16 45 77
52-75 Texas A&M University - College Station
0 0 16 57 78
52-75 The George Washington University
0 0 0 51 91
52-75 The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
29 32 0 49 72
52-75 The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
0 0 16 36 88
52-75 The University of Georgia
0 0 16 61 76
52-75 The University of Texas at Dallas
0 0 23 39 86
52-75 University College London
0 0 16 56 79
52-75 University of Amsterdam
0 0 16 60 66
52-75 University of California, Irvine
0 0 16 49 79
52-75 University of California, Santa Barbara
0 23 16 42 75
52-75 University of Copenhagen
0 0 23 41 75
52-75 University of Florida
0 0 16 52 77
52-75 University of Illinois at Chicago
0 0 16 53 71
52-75 University of Toronto
0 0 0 75 76
52-75 University of Utah
0 0 23 41 84
52-75 University of Virginia
0 0 16 49 87
52-75 University of Warwick
0 0 32 57 61
76-100 Catholic University of Louvain
0 0 16 46 69
76-100 Erasmus University
0 14 0 52 77
76-100 London Business School
0 0 0 37 91
76-100 North Carolina State University - Raleigh
0 0 20 42 67
76-100 Queen's University
0 0 16 38 70
76-100 Simon Fraser University
0 0 16 43 73
76-100 State University of New York at Stony Brook
0 0 16 30 88
76-100 The Australian National University
0 0 16 57 62
76-100 The University of Edinburgh
29 0 0 53 65
76-100 The University of Manchester
0 0 0 69 63
76-100 The University of Western Ontario
0 0 11 42 79
76-100 Tilburg University
0 0 0 54 70
76-100 University of Bristol
0 0 16 46 71
76-100 University of East Anglia
0 0 23 36 65
76-100 University of Massachusetts Amherst
0 0 16 36 77
76-100 University of Miami
0 0 23 35 77
76-100 University of Missouri - Columbia
0 0 0 49 77
76-100 University of Montreal
0 0 16 52 66
76-100 University of Nebraska - Lincoln
0 0 16 38 74
76-100 University of Notre Dame
0 0 0 40 89
76-100 University of Nottingham
29 0 0 61 65
76-100 University of Oklahoma - Norman
0 0 16 38 72
76-100 University of Oslo
0 38 0 43 66
76-100 University of South Carolina - Columbia
0 0 16 46 76
76-100 VU University Amsterdam
0 0 0 52 74