Pesquisa Universitária na América Latina – experiências exitosas

Já estão disponíveis os resultados deste projeto, desenvolvido pelo IETS em parceria com o InterAmerican Network of Academies of Sciences (IANAS), e com o apoio da Fundação Ford.  O trabalho consistiu no exame de um grupo seleto de casos em diferentes países latinoamericanos em que centros e institutos de pesquisa universitários se mostraram capazes de desenvolver projetos que têm, ao mesmo tempo, conteúdo científico e técnico de qualidade, e contribuem de forma significativa para o bem estar social e o desenvolvimento sustentado de seus países. O objetivo principal foi identificar os arranjos institucionais, financeiros e acadêmicos que permitem a estas instituições desenvolver estes projetos e atividades.

Sabemos, pela literatura existente, que as conexões mais frutíferas entre ciência, tecnologia e inovação não obedecem a uma sequência linear, da ciência básica às aplicações (conforme os modelos de oferta) nem da demanda à pequisa aplicada e básica (conforme os modelos de demanda), mas ocorrem através de interações e negociações complexas que ligam os diferentes participantes dos processos de inovação, nas quais o papel empresarial e de liderança dos pesquisadores e cientistas é de grande importância. As instituições universitárias, tradicionalmente, estão organizadas de forma rígida, que dificultam o desenvolvimento destas novas formas de interação. No entanto, existem exemplos importantes de atuação inovadora que vão além destas limitações, e que o estudo tratou de identificar e difundir.

Os casos escolhidos em cada país buscaram cobrir instituições públicas e privadas, em diferentes áreas de atuação – tecnológica, de biociências, agrícola e sócio-econômica. Além dos estudos de casos, disponíveis aqui, os resultados foram publicados em um livro consta de uma introdução, sobre “Educação Superior, Pesquisa Científica e Inovação na América Latina” (Simon Schwartzman); capítulos gerais sobre “Incentivos e Obstáculos ao Empreendedorismo Acadêmico” (Elizabeth Balbachevsky); “Propriedade Intelectual: Política, Administração e Prática nas Universidades Latinoamericanas” (Carlos M. Correa) e “Financiamento das Relações Universidade – Indústria” (Antônio José Junqueira Botelho e José Antônio Pimenta Bueno); e um capítulo para cada país, com um panorama geral da pesquisa universitária e o sumário dos estudos de caso.

O livro está publicado em versão eletrônica em português, pela Biblioteca Vrtual em Ciências Humanas do Centro Edelstein de Ciências Sociais;  em versão espanhola, pelo Instituto Internacional da UNESCO para a Educação Superior na América Latina e Caribe (IESALC), e a versão em inglês está prevista para ser publicada proximamene pela SensePublishers.

Os textos completos dos livros, assim como os 16 estudos de caso, podem ser baixados daqui.

Author: Simon Schwartzman

Simon Schwartzman é sociólogo, falso mineiro e brasileiro. Vive no Rio de Janeiro

One thought on “Pesquisa Universitária na América Latina – experiências exitosas”

  1. 1. Most likely, you already know this….Anyway, each year the Institute of Higher Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University calculates and publishes the “Academic Ranking of World Universities”. I’ve watched for a couple of years and found it to be quite good. Their criteria seem to be will chosen, though I would like to see a factor analysis of them, with factor weights for the variables.

    You can pull it up from Google, I think. Also, there is at least one journal article covering the methods used to establish it: N.C.Liu and Y.Cheng, ‘Tacademic Ranking of World Universities–Methodologies and
    Problems.” HIGHER EDUCATION IN EUROPE 30, Number 2. Then too it wascriticized in SCIENCE (Vol 317) 24 August 2007.

    My ‘evalutions’ of it are purely casual. Still, it would be most helpful for them to run a factor-weighted analysis of the criteria.

    2. This leads to a second comment. American universities dominate the list–all but three of the top 20 are US, and in 2006 more than half of
    the top 100. So what explains this? Probably several things. But here is one that may pertain to university research in Latin America. Though my evidence is just personal observation, I think the unique combination of class-room instruction, emphasising basic theory and methods, combined with serious participation in the ongoing research programs of faculty mentors as PIs, has a lot to do with the production of excellent young researchers. In my experience, the graduate and other students on such projects teach each other as they confront the day-to-day issues demanded by the needs of the project–and sometimes they also teach the professors. So the project is a learning situation for all the participants in the research group. This is the way empirical research was done at the University of Wisconsin during my years there. That system produced two or three Nobel prizes. Also, I used it in my own research and learned a lot from quite a few very bright graduate students, many of them Brazilians who today make important contributions to Brazil and to sociology.

    3. There seems to be an implication in the first paragraph of the blog that applied science is more important than than research intended only to
    contribute to basic knowledge. I think that underestimates the contributions basic research makes to important social issues. The basic researcher may not be at all interested in the possible applications of his findings. But there are plenty of other people who are–who read the basic research and apply them to practical problems. One never knows what the practical impact is of his basic research. Example: For the needs of one of my projects I did a socioeconomic regionalization of Brazil, which was published in Geographical Review in 1982. Later I was told by people
    who knew what they were talking about that it was used to shift investment just north of the Developed South (which in my regionalization was an arc from part of Espirto Santo to to the southern part of Goias, curving just north of Belo Horizonte), and it was also used (by Embrapa) to locate a new research center in Tocantins. When I did the analysis I had not the
    slightest interest in any applications for the development of the nation.The moral of the story is ‘don’t deride basic research just because the
    authorities and funding agencies can’t see any use for it.’

    To be blunt, I never once did a piece of research for the purpose of helping Brazil. In Brazil, I worked on stratification. That was because I was using Brazil’s experience to learn how to think systematically about
    stratification phenomena. Sometimes our group would do a project to learn how Brazil works–for examples: Pastore’s mobility research, Quirino’s work on the use of university-trained personnel in Sao Paulo’s industry, a project with Tourinho and some others to understand how migration relates to stratification. Also, I took advantage of every opportunity to get
    around Brazil and to listen to people of all social classes. There were two reasons for this. One was to make sure I knew what the statistical data from IBGE really meant. The other was so I would have a better
    understanding of the peoples of Brazil.

    Please don’t hesitate to take issue with anything I have been saying.

    Well, I guess I’m pretty wordy today.

    As ever,

    Archibald O. Haller, Editor
    POPULATION REVIEW

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