Latin America struggles to match research improvements

Brazil’s Universidade de São Paulo (USP) has more of the world’s best university programmes than any other Latin American institution, according to the 11th edition of the QS World University Rankings by Subject.

In total, 32 of USP’s programmes rank among the global top 100 for their subject. It is followed by Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México or UNAM (26 top-100 departments).

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile is Latin America’s third-best-performing university, with 16 top-100 programmes.

The continent’s top departments are USP’s dentistry offering, which places 13th, and UNAM’s modern language department, which has risen from 19th to 15th year on year.

The latest data illuminates a picture of a continent still struggling to keep pace with the rate of research improvements, and levels of employer recognition, enjoyed by their international peers. Of the 667 ranked programmes, 191 have fallen in rank, while 97 have improved their year-on-year position.

Ben Sowter, senior vice president of professional services at QS, said: “Only two of the 667 Latin American programmes we rank achieve scores of 90/100 or above for the citations per paper metric, which captures each programme’s research impact. Fourteen times as many programmes (28/667) achieve scores of 90/100 or above for our employability metric, by contrast.

“It is therefore clear that an emphasis on promoting international research partnerships, seeking to increase footprint in English-language journals, and forging applied research relationships are sensible steps for institutions in this region seeking to improve their performance.”

Latin American universities enjoy particularly strong representation in QS’s agriculture & forestry and petroleum engineering rankings. It is noteworthy that 41 of the world’s top 400 agriculture & forestry departments are in Latin America – just over one in 10. Almost half of these (17/41) can be found in Brazil.

In QS’s petroleum engineering ranking, which identifies those universities doing most to conduct innovative research into the future of this energy source, 11 of the global top-100 departments are from Latin American universities.