Photo: Cuba Noticias 360
Text: Hugo León
Cuba, which has historically enjoyed prestige when it comes to centers of higher education, was this time left out of the list of the best universities in Latin America in 2024.
The ranking was released by the Statista website and was originally made by the company Quacquarelli Symonds. It is made up of universities from a good part of the continent, but the Cuban ones did not qualify this time.
Among the main universities in the region, Brazil has four outstanding institutions: one of them is the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), the other is the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and Last is the Paulista State University (UNESP).
Chile is represented by two universities, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, which is second in the general list, and the University of Chile, which occupies fifth place.
In Mexico, two institutions also made it onto the list: the Tecnológico de Monterrey and the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico).
Likewise, the University of the Andes of Colombia stood out for Colombia, which is in sixth place on the list.
The University of Buenos Aires, from Argentina, also appears, although according to the text this house of higher education is in a situation of uncertainty because without a rescue plan it will not be able to maintain its operations for long.
The study was carried out by scoring more than 400 Latin American universities based on eight performance indicators: academic reputation, reputation as an employer, ratio of students to professors, international research network, citations per article, articles per professor, professors with doctorates, and web impact.
Given these parameters, not even the University of Havana, the most prestigious in Cuba, did well.
Currently, education on the island, not only university education but in all sectors, suffers from a difficult situation. The lack of teachers and conditions and supplies to teach classes are part of the problem, as the island’s highest authorities have recognized on more than one occasion.
