UC Chile is ranked best university in Latin America for 2022

"The rankings' evaluation summarizes the daily hard work of the entire UC Chile community for a long time. It is built through a culture of dedication". Those were the proud words of UC Chile's President, Ignacio Sánchez, after the release of the eleventh version of the QS Latin America University Rankings 2022. Because, for the fifth year in a row, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile has been named Latin America's top university in the QS Ranking.

UC Chile's main strength is its reputation among academics and employers, with a maximum score of 100 in each indicator. In addition, the university has a high score in the international research network (99.7) and of professors with doctorates (98 points).

The University of Sao Paulo in 2nd place and the University of Chile in 3rd place followed UC Chile.

Ben Sowter, Director of Research at QS, said: 

"In this year's edition, we see a stable hierarchy settle into place: there are no new entrants into the top twenty." But there are some movements among them.

Driven by a perfect score for the Employer Reputation indicator, Colombia's Universidad de Los Andes rises to 5th, replacing Brazil's Universidade Estadual de Campinas (7th). 

Mexico's highest-ranking university is Tecnológico de Monterrey (4th), which achieves top-ten scores from employers (99.9/100) and academics (95.7/100). However, its progress towards the top of the table is hampered by its relatively low research productivity score (20.4/100 for Papers per Faculty).

Argentina's highest-ranking institution remains Universidad de Buenos Aires, which has retained 8th position. It achieves full marks for Academic Reputation and Employer Reputation and the continent's eighth-best International Research Network result (99.2/100). 

However, like Tecnológico de Monterrey, its scores for research productivity (17.6/100) and research impact (34.6/100) preclude further progress.

Ben Sowter explained:

"Examining correlations between individual indicators allows us to provide some helpful advice to universities seeking to improve their position. For example, we observe a relatively clear relationship between the proportion of staff at a university with a Ph.D. and that university's research productivity."

"Similarly, Latin American universities that collaborate with more partners across the world also tend to enjoy higher levels of research output. With improving research footprints a major challenge for the continent's universities, the latest edition of our rankings provides some clear direction for improvement."

Performance Trends This Year:

• Brazil remains the continent's most extensive higher education system, with 95 universities featured in the published table.
• However, this is primarily a result of Brazil's size. When QS adjusts for population size, Chile has the most robust citizen-to-ranked university ratio, followed by Colombia.
• Of the countries with more than ten ranked institutions, Peru and Ecuador make the most significant progress, with 50% and 44% of their ranked institutions improving their position.
• Brazil and Argentina see the highest proportion of their institutions drop in the rankings among the countries with more than ten ranked institutions.
• Reflecting its status as the region's research powerhouse, all of the top five scores for Papers per Faculty - measuring research productivity – are achieved by Brazilian universities. Universidade de São Paulo, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, and UNESP all achieve perfect scores for this metric. Reflecting a relationship between research output and staff expertise, all three universities also score 100/100 in the Staff with Ph.D. indicator. 
• The continent's universities have improved their overall research output – measured using the average paper output per university. However, more than 60% of the ranked institutions were classified by QS as having medium or low research intensity.

About QS Top Universities Rankings

QS Quacquarelli Symonds is the world's leading provider of services, analytics, and insight into the global higher education sector.

The QS World University Rankings portfolio, inaugurated in 2004, has become the world's most popular source of comparative data about university performance.

They evaluate the continent's institutions on their academic standing, employer recognition, research performance, teaching resources, and levels of internationalization. The final table lists the top 418 universities.

The regional ranking uses indicators of the global ranking, such as:

• Academic reputation
• Employer Reputation
• Faculty to Student Ratio

It also considers a set of performance metrics tailored for the region: 

• Staff with Ph.D.
• International research network
• Citations per paper
• Papers per faculty
• Web impact