The UCR is the best in Central America in the university ranking of QS University Rankings for the year 2023. It also ranks 20th among all Latin American universities.
UCR is the best in Central America
The University of Costa Rica shares the podium with two other Costa Rican universities in the top three places in Central America: the National University of Heredia, ranked 85th in Latin America, and the Instituto Tecnológico de Cartago, ranked 92nd.
The ranking then places the Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá (123rd in LatAm) and the Universidad del Vale de Guatemala in 161st-170th place in LatAm, where it shares honors with the Ulacit of Costa Rica. Close behind is the University of Panama in 171st place and the University of San Carlos of Guatemala in 191st place.
The UCR has a rating (from 0 to 100) of 71.8, while the UNA has 43.7 and the ITCR reaches 41.6. The UCR is the only one in Central America that exceeds the minimum grade threshold of 70 points.
UCC is the best in Latin America
In the ranking, the Catholic University of Chile appears in first place with a score of 100 in Latin America, followed by the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, with a score of 99.8, as well as the University of Chile with 96.5, the Tecnológico de Monterrey with 94.7 and the State University of Campinas, Brazil, with 94.6. The sixth and seventh places go to the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia and the Universidad Autónoma de Monterrey, Mexico.
The study was conducted this year among 428 universities throughout Latin America and is based on a comprehensive methodology that includes “five basic criteria: research impact and productivity, teaching commitment, employability, online impact and internationalization.”
“The method retains key indicators from the global ranking, such as academic reputation, employer reputation and faculty-to-student ratio, but also considers a set of performance metrics carefully designed for the region,” adds the methodological information on the website.
The indicators:
Academic reputation (30%).
Taken from the annual survey conducted by QS designed to assess the perceptions of academics around the world on the quality of teaching and research at top universities. In doing so, it has grown to become the world’s largest academic opinion survey and, in terms of size and scope, is an unparalleled means of gauging sentiment in the academic community. This year, more than 130,000 responses were recorded worldwide.
Employer Reputation (20%)
The Employer Reputation metric is based on responses to the QS Employer Survey and asks employers to identify the institutions from which they source the most competent, innovative and effective graduates. The QS Employer Survey is also the largest of its kind in the world.
Faculty-to-student ratio (10%)
This is the ratio of the number of academic staff to the number of students. A higher number of faculty per student is an indirect indicator of institutions’ commitment to quality teaching.
Staff with Ph.D. (10%)
This indicator attempts to evaluate the quality of training of academic staff by detecting the proportion of them who have reached the highest level of training in their area of specialization.
This is an indirect measure of the universities’ commitment to high quality teaching and research.
International research network (10%)
Using data provided by Scopus, this indicator evaluates the degree of international openness in terms of research collaboration for each institution evaluated. To calculate this indicator, the Margalef Index, widely used in the environmental sciences, has been adapted to produce a score that gives an indication of the diversity of an institution’s research collaborations with other institutions in different parts of the world.
Citations per article (10%)
This ratio measures the average number of citations obtained per publication, and is an estimate of the impact and quality of the scientific work done by universities. Data indexed by Scopus are also used. To avoid anomalous results, only institutions that produced more than 100 articles in the last five years are evaluated.
Article and citation counts are standardized, ensuring that citations achieved in each of the five general faculty areas are weighted equally.
Papers by faculty (5%)
This indicator seeks to determine the average number of scientific publications (articles) produced by faculty and evaluates the research productivity of the institutions. The data are provided by Elsevier Scopus. The article count is normalized, which ensures that the citations achieved in each of the five general areas of the faculty are weighted equally.
Web impact (5%)
This indicator evaluates the effectiveness with which institutions are making use of new technologies. The base information is provided by the Ranking Web of Universities (www.webometrics.info), although the results are refactored to exclude the Excellence indicator, which is already considered in the metrics related to scientific research.