Abstract

CALDERON, Adolfo Ignacio; MATIAS, Raone Cezar  and  LOURENCO, Henrique da Silva. Rankings na educação superior: As melhores faculdades do Brasil (1982-2000). Est. Aval. Educ. [online]. 2014, vol.25, n.57, pp.226-247. ISSN 0103-6831.

This paper presents a study on the now defunct ranking Melhores Faculdades (Best Colleges), the first of its kind in the Brazilian higher education field, created in 1981 and issued on an yearly basis, over the course of 19 years, by the Playboy men’s magazine. We focus on the workings and the methodology of said ranking, based on a bibliography and literature review, comprising scientific papers, newspaper articles, university authorities’ accounts published on web portals, and, most importantly, the magazine issues themselves. Following the theoretical contextualization of the academic rankings, this paper reveals the methodology adopted by the ranking in question, based primarily on the opinions of chief human resources officers of large companies as well as the headmasters of the evaluated courses, highlighting a group of institutions from Brazil’s Southeast Region as the one with the highest quality courses, paving the way for the acceptance of rankings as quality assessment tools by university managers, despite the criticism.

Keywords : Higher Education; Academic Rankings; Playboy Ranking; Educational Evaluation.

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