USP Is the Best Brazilian University, Folha University Ranking Shows

Despite undergoing a severe financial crisis, USP is the star of the third edition of RUF (Folha University Ranking), the broadest evaluation of the quality of the country's college institutions.

The evaluation assesses objective indicators, such as the number of each university's scientific publications, and the opinion of professionals involved with college education - Datafolha interviewed 611 professors who evaluate courses for the Ministry of Education and 1,970 human resource professionals.

As in the previous year, the 192 universities were analyzed in five aspects: research, teaching, insertion in the labor market, innovation and internationalization.

Other public institutions followed USP - the federal universities of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), and Unicamp , a state university of São Paulo. The best private institution was PUC-RS, which ranked 18th.

Forty undergraduate courses were evaluated. USP had the highest number of top courses (20), followed by UFMG (7), UFRJ (5) and Unicamp (3).

USP, however, didn't rank first in the two major areas. UFRJ was No1 in administration and UFMG has the best law school.

As in the previous year, USP was hampered for not fully participating in the Enade (students' federal exam). It obtained zero in the indicator, which corresponds to 4% of the courses' degrees.

If USP's result had been similar to that of the two top federal universities, it would also lead in administration and law.

The ranking also shows that colleges with few students or private schools can have quality similar to that of the best public universities.

São Paulo's FGV ranked second in economy, third in law and fifth in administration; Universidade Anhembi Morumbi was the runner-up in tourism.

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