Competing on the world stage: the Universidade de Sa?o Paulo and global universities rankings

• Ano de defesa: 2015
• Autor(a) principal: Axel-Berg, Justin Hugo
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Benchmarking; Ensino superior; Governança da pesquisa; Pesquisa Mode 2; Rankings
• Link de acesso: http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/101/101131/tde-12082015-161448/

As higher education becomes ever more universalised, and an increasingly fundamental driver in development of both human and technological capital, the need to assess and compare these capabilities has become an important feature of 21st century academia. Public debate over universities has crystallised around universities rankings. This dissertation explains the rise of the three main global university rankings and their relevance to universities on the periphery, in this case the Universidade de São Paulo. By looking first at their theoretical context and then at their methodological limitations, the dissertation shows that these rankings are inadequate measures of performance for modern research universities, and do not provide realistic or desirable goals for universities outside of the Anglo-American system. However, they do point to a variety of weaknesses within USP\'s system of evaluation, which are addressed with suggestions on how to improve evaluation. The final section builds on the incipient benchmarking movement to suggest a variety of different ways USP can engage with the need to compare and evaluate without the pitfalls of universal rankings.