Unicamp is the third best university in Latin America, according to the Times Higher Education 2022 ranking, released this Thursday (14). This year, the ranking includes 211 higher education institutions from 14 countries on the continent, 76 of which are Brazilian. The list is headed by the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, followed by the University of São Paulo (USP).
In the opinion of the dean of Unicamp, Antonio Meirelles, the good performance in the ranking is due to several factors. "The quality of the selection processes of faculty, researchers, staff and undergraduate and postgraduate students; the simultaneous development of teaching, research and technological transfer; and the permanent effort to align these activities with the main national and international education demands and research", points out Meirelles.
Importance of autonomy and commitment to Agenda 2030
The Times Higher Education ranking is based on 13 indicators grouped into five major areas: teaching, the item with the greatest weight in the ranking, corresponding to 36% of the institutions' grade; research, responsible for 34% of the score; citations, with a weight of 20%; internationalization, corresponding to 7,5%; and knowledge transfer, with a 2,5% impact on evaluation.
Unicamp obtained 87,9 out of 100 points in the evaluation. The highest scoring criterion was research, with a full 100 points; followed by teaching, with 91,3 points; citations and knowledge transfer, with 74,6 points; and internationalization, with 55,9 points.
According to the British consultancy, teaching and research are crucial factors in assessing the commitment of institutions to training new generations of researchers and their ability to invest in research, despite being subject to economic and political circumstances. Based on these factors, the study evaluates how much universities attract students and researchers from other countries, their contribution to technological innovation and their role as a reference for other research.
Antonio Meirelles points out that the positive result of Unicamp and the other state universities in São Paulo, USP and Unesp (ranked 2nd and 12th, respectively), is also due to the financing model based on the percentage of ICMS collection in São Paulo and financial autonomy and administrative aspects of the institutions.
"The creation of this forecasting model, in 1989, allowed the state universities of São Paulo to plan their future investments strategically over the last three decades, resulting in continuous and consistent growth in their indicators", highlights Meirelles.
Another factor of excellence is the University's alignment with the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). "This has already resulted in improvements in the University's governance, an increase in inclusion and diversity in the academic community and the incorporation of major contemporary challenges into Unicamp's teaching, research and knowledge transfer activities, with consequent gains in its performance", he celebrates the rector.
