Maria Fernanda Ziegler | FAPESP Agency – The three state universities in São Paulo came together to develop new performance assessment metrics and international comparisons. The idea is to create a digital system for common use, maintained by the offices responsible for managing indicators at the three universities. The system will be able to more accurately assess not only the performance, but also the socioeconomic, cultural and environmental impact of public universities.
The cooperation between the University of São Paulo (USP), the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and the São Paulo State University (Unesp) aims to make performance metrics interoperable, with prior auditing of the indicators sent for international comparisons.
The initiative is supported by FAPESP, within the scope of the project “Performance indicators at São Paulo state universities”, linked to the Public Policy Research Program and renewed until 2022.
Led by USP professor Jacques Marcovitch and the Council of Rectors of São Paulo State Universities (Cruesp), the study has as a partner the Secretariat of Economic Development, Science and Technology of the State of São Paulo.
USP, for example, has already implemented a new office for managing indicators and is promoting changes in the technological systems for capturing and disseminating data. Unicamp is reforming internal structures, with the aim of generating data that can be used in its strategic planning. Unesp is implementing a long-term, multidisciplinary plan to analyze the possible relationships between academic performance and the trends evidenced by the rankings.
“University rankings have become extremely popular not only among academics, journalists, education administrators, but also the general population. However, they are seen from a very distorted perspective, like a global Olympics in which universities are competing with each other, in which positions are gained or lost”, said Marco Antônio Zago, president of FAPESP, at the opening of the II Forum “Academic Performance Indicators and International Comparisons: Impacts on Society”, held on October 18th, in the Foundation’s auditorium.
For Zago, there is an undesirable effect created by the profusion of new indices and indicators. “It is, therefore, our responsibility, as important universities, to respond in a well-founded way to the challenge of identifying indicators of relevance and ensuring quality, taking into account the heterogeneity of universities, their influence on the city, the state and the country,” he said.
Rethink the university
The meeting was also the stage for the launch of the book “Repensar a Universidade II: Impactos para a Sociedade”, the second publication of the project, with articles on performance evaluation in universities and which establishes new performance metrics to increase their presence in international comparisons with developments that will take place by 2022.
“The project is fundamental, because as a university we are suffering attacks that have never existed in our country. It is important that we understand this motivation and also show society as a whole the socioeconomic impact of universities. This is only possible by communicating data and showing results”, said Marcelo Knobel, president of Cruesp and dean of Unicamp.
Accounting for 33,8% of all national scientific production, the São Paulo state higher education and research complex intends to add data relating to federal universities to the project, which are also opening their metrics offices (e-data). Present at the forum were rectors and representatives from the Federal University of Itajubá (Unifei), Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Federal University of Ceará (UFC) and Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp).
“No university evolves, in fact, without being compared to others in measuring its advances. It is necessary to be collective and promote a movement in favor of the quality of higher education institutions in Brazil. The contemporary university makes otherness one of its foundations”, said Marcovitch, who highlighted the initiative as an effort, unprecedented in Brazil, to build a public policy in search of better levels of excellence and new spaces in external comparisons.
Bridge with society
To this end, a course will be offered in March 2020 on indicators and metrics associated with monitoring academic performance and international comparisons. Among the project's next actions is the focus on digitalization.
“Throughout the project, we have seen the impact of the digitalization of content and the role of universities not only as a generator, but also as a curator of knowledge,” said Marcovitch.
The role of curator of universities was highlighted in the lecture by Priscila Cruz, executive president of the civil society movement Todos Pela Educação. Cruz defended the need for universities not only in teacher training, but also in the research results necessary for the formulation of evidence-based public policies.
“No one says that quality public education is not important. But, contradictorily, we have not given it the due priority. We need to move away from rhetoric, strengthening bridges with the university so that, based on academic production, we can help governments produce pressing solutions in education. This way it will be possible to build a fair country in the field of education, but with a very strong impact on the economy, income distribution and the guarantee of other rights", said Cruz.
A historical example of a bridge created between the university and a socioeconomic sector is in the agricultural area. In one of the articles that make up the book, Solange Santos and Rogerio Mugnaini, from the School of Communication and Arts (ECA-USP), analyzed the production of three public universities in São Paulo between 2007 and 2016. During the period, there was an increase in internationalization from 44% to 64% in agricultural sciences. The data were measured from articles published on the Scielo and Web of Science platforms.
According to Santos, the formation of human capital and knowledge occurs mainly in universities. “It is a priority area for the country, due to its social relevance, economic and environmental impact. Until the 1980s, the country was a major importer of food and became a major producing power. Our results show that Brazil achieved this thanks to research and the formation of human capital – factors that are strongly linked to universities – in an area whose social, economic and environmental impact is very large”, said Santos.
The publication also shows the impact of USP's postgraduate studies on the quality of other universities with the analysis of data from more than 50 thousand graduates, between 1970 and 2014. The results reveal that 52% are professors at universities in Brazil or abroad. “In the case of UFABC, 52% of the teachers are graduates of USP. At Unesp it is 40% and, at Unicamp, 34%”, said Aluísio Segurado, coordinator of the Academic Performance Indicator Management Office (Egida) at USP.
According to Teresa Atvars, general coordinator of Unicamp, the new indicators and metrics should represent a disciplinary tool for decision-making for the university. When comparing institutions, she emphasizes, it is also necessary to take into account the context and modus operandi that differentiates each university.
“In the case of Unicamp, it is a comprehensive university in teaching, research and extension and with a huge impact in the area of health. In this way, the analysis cannot only be based on objective data, but also on qualitative information,” he said.
For Sabine Righetti, academic coordinator of the Folha University Ranking (RUF), universities work with different metrics. “Universities are very different from each other and the rankings look at them all as if they were the same thing. However, it is important that this does not happen so that there is no risk of mistaken public policies,” she said.
