International rankings have impacted higher education policy as well as colleges and universities all over the world (see College and university rankings). In most cases these rankings or hierarchycal classifications of higher education institutions are not very sensitive to different historical developments and university traditions; distinct roles played by colleges and universities in different countries; or particular economic, cultural, social and political conditions, at the local, national or regional levels, that shape higher education institutions and systems in alternative ways.[1]
Mexican colleges, universities and other research institutions have been compared in the Estudio Comparativo de Universidades Mexicanas (ECUM) produced within the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México(UNAM).[2] ECUM provides data on intitutional participation in articles on ISI Web of Knowledge indexed journals; faculty participation in each of the three levels of Mexico's National Researchers System (SNI); graduate degrees within CONACYT's (National Council of Science and Technology) register of quality graduate programs (PNPC); and number of academic research bodies (cuerpos academicos) according to the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) program PROMEP.
ECUM provides online access to data for 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 through the Explorador de datos del ECUM (ExECUM). Institutional data can be visualized through three options:
ExECUM has been designed in order to allow users to establish comparison types and levels which they consider relevant. For this purpose data is presented in its raw form and virtually no indicators or ponderations are built within this system. Users can establish relationships between variables and build their own indicators according to their own need and analytical perspectives. All data is in levels or as percentage contributed to total national research output. No measure of the size of the universities surveyed is available. Therefore, every possible ranking is subject to considerable bias towards large universities. Moreover, the ranking may not be disaggregated into specialties which further increases the bias.
Based on this comparative study project, the Dirección General de Evaluación Institucional at UNAM, creators of ECUM, have published a two reports called Desempeño de Universidades Mexicanas en la Función de Investigación: Estudio Comparativo and Estudio comparativo de universidades mexicanas. Segundo reporte: desempeño en investigación y docencia providing an analysis of the data for 2007 and 2008.