The University of Guadalajara, the best public state university in Mexico

The University of Guadalajara ranks sixth among the best universities in Mexico and remains, for the fourth consecutive year, as the best public state university according to the 2022 edition of the QS Latin America University Rankings, a count carried out by the international rating agency Quacquarelli Symonds.

According to the report released last Wednesday, out of 64 educational institutions, this House of Studies is ranked sixth, only behind national institutions such as the Tec de Monterrey, UNAM, the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana and the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, the latter three being federal universities.

The General Academic and Innovation Coordinator of the UdeG, Dr. Carlos Iván Moreno Arellano, highlighted that for the fourth consecutive year this university is ranked as the best Mexican state public university in one of the three most important academic rankings in the world, despite being the state public university with the lowest federal budget per student (just over 20,000 pesos per student; the national average is around 40,000 pesos per student).

The ranking considers the progress of institutions in: academic reputation, reputation with employers, national and international research networks, citations for research articles, ratio of students per professor, impact on the web, academics with doctorates, research articles per professor, among other aspects.

This year, the UdeG made progress in four indicators, namely: academic reputation, which is the recognition and evaluation of academics from other institutions; reputation among employers, who answer surveys to know their perception of the institutions; citations of researchers per academic article in peer-reviewed journals, and in international research networks.

Moreno Arellano emphasized that the ranking body evaluates the indicators provided by the universities, so appearing among the ten best Mexican universities is an exercise in transparency and a sort of academic audit.

"The rankings are instruments of transparency, organization and statistical analysis and international academic auditing. For UdeG, participation in national and international rankings has been a strategic exercise of internal improvement and self-criticism," he explained.

He emphasized that one of the indicators in which the University did not advance in the last year, and even went slightly backwards, is in the ratio of students per professor. This is due to the fact that "while the University of Guadalajara has increased its enrollment by 100 thousand students in ten years, public budgets have not grown in the same proportion; they have even decreased from 2015 to date. Which prevents the University from being able to increase its teaching staff at the same rate as enrollment grows," he said.

He regretted that Mexico does not have any university positioned among the best 100 in the world, a result of insufficient budgetary support and the absence of educational policies with a long-term vision.

He added that, according to the National Association of Universities and Higher Education Institutions (ANUIES), from 2015 to date public budgets in the country have steadily decreased and universities face a deficit equivalent to 22 billion pesos, that is, they operate with fewer resources than six years ago.

For the case of the UdeG this deficit in the ordinary subsidy, and adding the disappearance of the extraordinary competition funds, reaches two thousand 200 million pesos in six years, which forces this House of Study to do more with less. "Notwithstanding the adverse national and state budgetary situation, the UdeG continues to advance in the fulfillment of its substantive functions," Moreno Arellano emphasized.

At the Latin American level, the UdeG ranks 44th among 418 higher education institutions, eight places above the position achieved in 2011. This House of Studies is above the Latin American average in several indicators, such as professors with doctorates.

The institution remains in 34th place among Latin American universities in terms of academic reputation and raised its indicators in terms of web impact (18th place), international research networks (42nd place) and reputation with employers (90th place).