Rising research income in emerging economies universities is, by and large, accompanying better performance in worldwide rankings – but there are notable exceptions to this rule.
This graph shows the year-on-year change in average overall score for 12 countries in the Emerging Economies University Rankings 2018 and 2019 compared with how they scored on research income in both years.
The fainter bubbles represent research income and overall scores for 2018, and the brighter bubbles show the position of each country on average for 2019. Blue, meanwhile, denotes “advanced emerging” economies, and yellow represents “secondary emerging” nations.
Brazil and Turkey both saw a noticeable drop in their research income score out of the group, although their overall scores still rose slightly over the period.
However, most other nations in the set improved both their research income score and their overall rankings result, most obviously Malaysia. China and Russia did not record a large increase in?their average research income score, but both consolidated their place as the leading emerging countries in the ranking overall, alongside Malaysia and -Taiwan.
Other interesting trends include Egypt creeping up on many other emerging nations on the overall performance of its ranked universities despite having a much lower average score for research income than any of the other countries. These include Mexico, which continues to lag behind on overall score despite a slight improvement on research income.
Research income could reflect past research performance (ie, by winning grants) as well as money that is then helping a university to invest in the future. Therefore, it is difficult to assess exactly how it might affect overall score and, if there is a link, whether a time lag is involved.
But it is worth noting that most emerging economies still lag a fair way behind some of the world’s highest scoring nations for research income, such as the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden, which all tend to do well on overall score, too.
Print headline: The research cash nexus
