By Andres Oppenheimer
While Latin
America’s attention was focused on the Venezuelan elections last week, few paid
attention to a news item that should have raised eyebrows — a new ranking of
the world’s best universities shows a near total absence of Latin American
schools.
The
London-based Times Higher Education World University Ranking of the world’s 400
best universities released Oct. 3 shows that, despite the fact that Brazil is
the world’s sixth biggest economy and Mexico the fourteenth, there is not one
single Latin American university among the world’s best 100, and only four
among the world’s best 400.
The
region’s best-ranked school is the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in the
158th place. The State University of Campinas, Brazil, is in the group of
schools lumped together between the 251st and 275th places, while the
Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia and the National Autonomous University of
Mexico (UNAM) are in the ranking’s 351-400 group.
There are
no universities from Chile, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela or other countries in
the region among the world’s best 400 higher education institutions. By
comparison, there are 22 Asian universities among the world’s best 200 and 56
Asian schools among the world’s best 400.
Overall,
the ranking shows that U.S. universities remain by far the world’s best placed
— the California Institute of Technology is No. 1 in the world, and seven of
the world’s top 10 are U.S. schools — but Asian institutions are rising fast.
Several Chinese, Japanese and South Korean are moving up in the ranking, while
51 U.S. institutions lost ground compared to last year’s ranking.
Two other
respected world international rankings released earlier this year show
similarly depressing results for Latin America. Neither the London-based QS
World University Ranking nor the Shanghai, China-based Jiao Tong University
rankings have any Latin American university among their top 100 schools, which
are also dominated by U.S., British and Asian institutions.
Phil Baty,
editor of the Times Higher Education ranking, told me in a telephone interview
that the reasons behind Latin America’s poor showing in these rankings include
a relatively low state funding for universities, and the universities’
below-standard focus on research.
With few
exceptions, such as the Sao Paulo state’s massive funding for its best
universities, most Latin American universities are underfunded, he said. While
the United States and South Korea invest 2.6 percent of their GDP in higher
education institutions, Chile invests 2.5 percent, and Mexico and Argentina 1.4
percent each, he said.
“Asian
nations are investing very heavily in their universities,” Baty told me. “World
class universities cost money. In Latin America, we see a concentration of
resources in universities that have huge numbers of students and are very much
focused on providing infrastructure for them, which makes it really difficult to
invest in cutting edge research.”
Many Latin
American governments object to these rankings, claiming that the dozen
indicators they use, including surveys of academics around the world and
peer-reviewed publications in academic journals, tend to favor English-speaking
countries. Several Latin American nations are working on a UNESCO-supported
project to produce their own Latin America-only university ranking.But,
according to Baty, his rankings survey includes a geographically weighted
participation of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking academics. And language is no
excuse for staying behind in the race for academic excellence, he said.
“Asian
universities are actively publishing in the English language, because they want
their research to have a larger audience and a higher impact,” he says. “We are
not seeing that in Latin America.”
My opinion:
I agree. The tendency by many Latin American governments to dismiss the three
most prominent world university rankings, and their plans to produce their own
ranking confined to Latin American universities, is a recipe for complacency,
inaction and backwardness.
Claiming,
as they do, that Latin American universities have their own special goals, such
as providing free education to the poor, is no excuse for not competing on the
world stage. Saying that their own regional ranking will more accurately
reflect the region’s performance than the world rankings amounts to joining a
neighborhood soccer tournament rather than the World Cup.
Instead of
being dismissed or ignored, world rankings such as the one released last week
should make the front pages in Latin America (and in the United States, too) if
nothing else to remind us how Asian countries are steadily rising in the global
knowledge economy, while many of our countries in the Americas are being left
increasingly behind.
No comments:
Post a Comment