Where are the ‘BRICS’? Brazil, Russia and India have no institutions at all in the 2010-11 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. China — the ‘c’ in the developing-nation acronym — has a significant presence in the tables, but there are doubts about how quickly it can send its universities into the very top tier of the global higher education elite.
The term ‘Bric’, coined in 2001 by Goldman Sachs’ head of global economic research and commodities, Jim O’Neill, has been used to highlight the shift of economic power from the West to these nations. The world has watched as these potential giants have begun to claim their positions as major global players. So why aren’t they storming the league tables?
Brazil, and indeed South America as a whole, has no institutions in the top 200. Despite producing almost 19 percent of the world’s research in tropical medicine and more than 12 percent in parasitology, according to our rankings data partner Thomson Reuters, and excelling in other life-science fields, Brazil’s total research output in other disciplines is relatively low. However, with good investment prospects and strong relationships with the world’s two reigning higher education superpowers — the US and the UK — Brazil could break into the top 200 before long with the University of São Paulo, its best prospect.
Russia is perhaps the most notable absentee from the tables, given its history of groundbreaking, or perhaps earth-shaking work in space sciences and nuclear physics. While its booming oil industry and the relative stability of recent years have put this humbled superpower back on the top rung of international diplomacy, its research institutions have continued their decline from the glory days of Sputnik.
Science has long been at the heart of Russian academe, but many researchers fear for its health. In late 2009, a number of prominent Russian scientists based around the world signed an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, the prime minister. It describes a bleak situation in Russian science: “The regression is continuing, and the scale and danger of the process have been underestimated. The level of finance for Russian science is in sharp contrast with comparable figures in developed countries. Scientists’ mass departures abroad have remained a major problem for Russia.”
India’s story is in sharp contrast to that of Russia. Although its sector is short of world-class status, it undoubtedly possesses the potential to make rapid advances. Government spending on research represented 0.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2009; however, this figure is expected to rise to 1.2 percent by 2012. Nevertheless, India still has a relatively low number of postgraduate researchers. The number of Indians holding postgraduate degrees increased from 2.4 percent of the population (20.5 million) in 1991 to 4.5 percent (48.7 million) in 2005. But this level still trails behind that of Western economies such as the US, where almost 10 percent of the population has postgraduate degrees.
The big word in Indian higher education now is “trajectory”. A slow increase in publications saw India’s tally, as measured by Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science database, reach about 20,000 a year in 2004. However, since then the pace has picked up with a 10 percent annual increase, and by 2020, India’s output is expected to surpass the total publications of all the G7 countries.
However, Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, sounds a note of caution. “India’s problem is that the traditional universities, such as the University of Mumbai, are too large — some with half a million on their campuses and in their affiliated undergraduate colleges — to permit effective management. Further, the universities have been underfunded for decades and there is no evaluation system for academic staff — people are simply promoted on the basis of seniority and sometimes hired based on connections, regional affiliations, caste groups and so on.”
China is notable as the only Bric economy with a significant selection of universities in the world top 200. With six institutions in the table, the country has largely maintained its standing in the league tables in the face of a more rigorous evidence-based rankings methodology for 2010-11.
(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)