UBA ranked among the world's top 100 universities in 10 disciplines, but scientific output dropped in the country – 02/26/2019

As it has been for years, the University of Buenos Aires returned to the international summit. This time in the "QS ranking by themes", released Tuesday. Of the approximately 20,000 existing universities worldwide, 1,200 out of 78 countries – which meet the minimum quality requirements – have been evaluated and the UBA has remained among the top 100 in 10 disciplines. In modern languages ​​(16th), the UBA reached the "top 20" in a thematic area for the first time. The University of Palermo was also among the top 100 in a discipline (Art and Design), with which the country has eleven of the top 100 in the world.

But this lime is mixed with its share of sand. Argentine university education has shown – in the same study – a slight decrease compared to last year, when he had 14 disciplines in the top100. Consulted by Clarin, the authors of the report believe that a possible cause of the decline may be due to poor performance in terms of research and academic reputation, two of the parameters with which the results of this ranking are established.

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"Last year, no Argentinian institution ranks among the top 100 in the world in terms of research in any of the disciplines considered. In addition, the average ranking of Argentine universities in "Nominations by Publication" does not reach the 500th rank, even lower than that reached last year, and behind the Brazilian average, "said Martin Juno of QS Quacquarelli to this newspaper Symonds, the British consulting firm that makes the ranking.

The report's authors also caution against the "imbalance" of the Argentine university system, because of the large gap between the UBA and the rest of the universities. That of Buenos Aires is 32 times among the 600 best located in all disciplines. It is more than half of that of all Argentine universities. "The Argentine higher education system is one of the most unbalanced in the region," the report says.

For the Rector of the UBA Alberto Barbieri, "it is a message for the entire Argentine ruling clbad. The university and the scientific system they need to maintain the investment and, in particular, the UBA requires it to continue to create leverage over the rest of the system. In this election year, it would be good for the candidates to discuss this, say what they will do, "he said. Clarin.

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Juno, of QS, insists that "the biggest difference (of the country) is observed in the field of scientific research, and This is where the country's efforts should focus. Incentives could be put in place for academics to dedicate a a greater proportion of your time spent on research activitiesmonitoring not only the quantity but also the quality of scientific production. The impact measured by citations or references by other researchers is a crucial indicator in this regard. The construction of international collaborative networks larger and more diverse. "

With regard to funding, he added that "this is a key element for doing excellent research.In the case of Argentina, the heavy reliance on public funds could be considered a potential weakness of scientific system in view of the cyclical budgetary constraints of the public sector ".

At the regional level, Argentina was in fourth place. Brazil has 39 disciplines this year among the top 100, Mexico 27, Chile 26 and Country 11 (10 of the UBA).

"The UBA continues to be among the first of all countries and we have obtained it despite investment differences.With 300,000 students, we received $ 600 million in annual budget. the same number of students receives 4,000 million and the University of San Pablo, with 90,000 students, also 4,000 million.You must be aware of this, the UBA remains in the rankings for the effort we all make. In the labs we have today with Conicet, we have to invest three times more than before, otherwise it is impossible to maintain them, "Barbieri said.

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QoS is one of four global university rankings that take place year after year and which are gaining more and more political influence and presence in the media. Unlike others, such as Shanghai (China) and CWUR (Saudi Arabia), the QS rankings (as well as the Times and the English) give great importance to what they call "institutional reputation", namely: based on perception surveys. Rankings like those in Shanghai and CWUR, on the other hand, build their measurements by giving more weight to more "objective" data, such as the number of professors with a Nobel Prize or published articles. One that was known this Tuesday is the QS ranking specifically broken down by areas of study.

QS produces its "Global Ranking of Universities by Subject" based on four parameters: academic reputation (based on perception surveys), the reputation of the (identical) employer, the number of citations in scientific articles and, finally, an index that measures the productivity and impact of research, based on articles cited most by other scientists and the number of articles cited.

RB