Performance of Brazilian higher education institutions in the innovation criteria in university rankings

The contemporary university has a greater interaction with society, which leads to a greater focus on its third mission, the transfer of knowledge. In this way, in addition to their excellence in teaching and research, universities play an important role in generating knowledge in the form of innovative ideas. Concomitantly, in recent years, university rankings have gained notoriety and importance, influencing the decision-making process of investment, evaluation, policies and even the restructuring of institutions. Therefore, this study had as objective to raise the indicators adopted for the analysis of the global performance of universities and the situation of Brazilian educational institutions in the main evaluation rankings. Considering the importance of innovative activities within universities, this study focused mainly on criteria related to innovation. For this, four rankings were selected as object of study, which were analyzed in terms of their methodology, especially with regard to innovation. This study showed that the first 10 Brazilian universities ranked in each classification system, in the general classification, remain practically the same. As for the innovation question, only two rankings presented criteria that measure in a certain way the generation and transfer of knowledge.