The regional ranking is led by the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, followed by the University of Sao Paulo and the Tecnológico de Monterrey.
The top ten Ecuadorian universities in Latin America were rated in an analysis process in which 410 institutions were taken into account, according to the ranking annual service from Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a global provider of academic analytics.
“The ranking regional uses five basic criteria: impact and productivity of research, teaching commitment, employability, impact online and internationalization. The method preserves the key indicators of the global ranking, such as academic reputation, employer reputation and the proportion of teachers and students, but also considers a set of performance metrics carefully designed for the region ”, it is specified in the web portal of the QS.
In the first place of the ranking Latin American is the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, followed by the University of Sao Paulo and the Tecnológico de Monterrey.
The San Francisco de Quito University (USFQ)
The first Ecuadorian institution, the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), appears in 65th place, with an overall score of 49.4.
Diego Quiroga, rector of the USFQ, highlights the constant investment in equipment and infrastructure to provide students and teachers with the best working conditions. “We have a policy of reinvesting everything in the university. This reinvestment in new equipment is very important. 90% or more of what we invest comes from student pensions, so we have to be very careful in how we invest, so that students and researchers have the equipment, ”Quiroga details.
Another factor that has had an impact on improving the academic quality of the USFQ, says the rector Quiroga, is the freedom to propose, create, research that is promoted in the cloister.
“So that teachers and students are free to exchange ideas,” emphasizes the manager, who adds that they try to be rigorous in the selection of their teachers to have a staff capable of training professionals in different branches, such as science, whose Contributions to society have been evidenced in the sequencing of the genome of variants of the new coronavirus or the discovery of animal species in the East, for example.
In the analysis to elaborate the ranking, QS considered that academic reputation would award 30% of the grade.
“(Percentage) taken from the annual survey conducted by QS, designed to assess the perceptions of academics around the world about the quality of teaching and research in the best universities (…). This year, more than 130,000 responses were registered around the world ”, is detailed in the explanation of the evaluation methodology.
On the other hand, 20% of the qualification corresponds to the results of the survey carried out to employers of the graduates. 10%, on the other hand, reflects the relationship between the number of academic staff and the number of students.
“A greater number of teachers per student is an indirect indicator of the institutions’ commitment to high-quality teaching,” it adds.
To that 60% is added a 10% in which the training of academic staff is considered, especially if they are teachers with doctorates.
Litoral Polytechnic Higher School (Espol)
At the Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (Espol), which ranks second among the country’s best-ranked universities in the ranking Latin American, ranked 74, according to QS, they are looking for the best professionals for their staff of teachers and researchers, emphasizes Paúl Herrera, academic vice-rector of the public institution.
“What influences an institution to be of quality are the people, its teachers and students. We have a selection process that is quite rigorous, in which the majority of teachers are required not only to have experience in teaching, but also in research. There are certain areas in which it is required, as a mandatory requirement, to have a Ph.D. degree and experience in research ”, details the manager, who adds that other requirements are demanded in specific cases that are not even contemplated in the national regulations, such as mastery of English, the predominant language in the dissemination of scientific information.
Academic quality is also based on parameters and processes that require accreditations currently held by the Espol, Herrera says, such as the one awarded by the international accreditor ABET to engineering careers. This means that students and graduates of the polytechnic institution of accredited careers meet the global quality standards required by the international entity. In addition to the Espol, a private university in the country has this endorsement.
The remaining 30% to complete the indicators considered to qualify universities is related to the production of research articles and their international openness in terms of collaborations with other institutions, citations of those articles and the use of new technologies.
The National Polytechnic School (EPN)
The National Polytechnic School (EPN), which is ranked third among the best-positioned Ecuadorian universities in the ranking Latin American QS, at step 106, has 325 scientific publications so far in 2021, according to the records of Scopus, an important database of bibliographic references and scientific citations. In 2020, the EPN reached a peak of 553 publications. In each of those years, the tertiary education center registered more than 6,000 citations, that is, its publications were cited in external academic documents.
“It is not only the fact of the number of publications and the place where those publications are, but that these publications serve other researchers to do their research. It is an issue that is highly positioned in the rankings, that is to say, how useful is the data from the research that one developed for others to advance in their research ”, highlights Florinella Muñoz, rector of the EPN.
In addition to scientific production in areas related to oil and chemicals, the directive states that academic quality is also reflected in the professional profiles that the institution forms and that it exports to countries in North America and Europe.
“For example, one of our engineers works in the chemical weapons control body in the Netherlands, in a position of great responsibility,” says Muñoz.
After the USFQ, the Espol and the EPN, there are the following: the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE), the Central University of Ecuador (UCE), the University of Cuenca, the University of the Armed Forces (ESPE, formerly Escuela Polytechnic of the Army), the University of Espiritu Santo (UEES), the University of the Americas (UDLA) and the Private Technical University of Loja (UTPL). (I)
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