Universities
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Universities, especially public, maintain regular groups and lines of research, in which Doctoral, Master’s and even undergraduate students from scientific initiation programs participate, under the guidance of professors. Learn more from a panorama of Brazilian universities and their involvement in research and innovation.
Brazil currently has an extensive and decentralized higher education system. Altogether, the country has 2,457 higher education institutions, offering 41,953 undergraduate courses in all regions. The data are included in the Census of Higher Education 2023 and were released by the Ministry of Education (MEC) and the “Anísio Teixeira” National Institute of Educational Studies and Research (INEP) in October 2024. According to the survey, there are 316 public and 2,264 private higher education institutions in Brazil.
In line with their academic orientation, the institutions are classified as universities, university centers, colleges, and federal institutes. They can be public or private, linked to federal, state or municipal governments.
Universities are characterized by the integral nature of their teaching, research, and extension activities. They are multidisciplinary academic institutions that produce institutionalized intellectual knowledge. To do so, they must follow the requirements of the Ministry of Education (MEC), such as having at least one-third of the teaching staff working on a full-time basis and one third with Master’s and Doctoral degrees.
University centers include one or more areas of knowledge, but institutionalized research is not mandatory for them. Colleges are institutions that offer higher education in only one area of knowledge and can be part of a university, university centers, or independent.
Federal institutes are dedicated to technical training, providing professional skills in different areas. They offer a high school education integrated with technical education, technical courses, university technology courses, undergraduate, and graduate degrees.
As for private institutions, they may or may not have a for-profit purpose. Among those that do not have this objective are the community, philanthropic or confessional types.
In all 27 states, there are federal and state universities. The fact is that Brazil did not have any higher education institutions until the beginning of the 19th century. After the Independence of Brazil, the first advanced schools emerged, in a scattered fashion, without university status but with a professional focus, especially in the areas of law, medicine, and engineering. The University of São Paulo, one of the most important in the country, was founded in 1934.
Rankings
According to the assessment of the QS World University Ranking 2025, Brazil is the Latin American country with the largest number of world-renowned universities. In the list of the best universities in Latin America, Brazil appears with three in the top 10: the University of São Paulo (USP), the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
This time, 35 Brazilian educational institutions were included in the ranking, eight more than in the previous edition. Although Brazil has the largest number of recognized universities in Latin America, only USP is among the top 100 in the world – in 92nd place.
. The second best-placed Brazilian is Unicamp (232nd place), followed by UFRJ (304th place) and São Paulo State University (Unesp, 489th). USP has been among the top universities in the country for years and has maintained its position in relation to the ranking of the previous year.
The institutions are ranked according to nine indicators: sustainability, international research network, employability, reputation among employers, academic reputation, citations per university, ratio of professors per student, number of international professors and number of international students.
In the 2024 Times Higher Education (THE) British magazine ranking, USP appears as the best Latin American university, ranked in the same position as last year, in the group of 201-250, the second best Brazilian university in the ranking is UNICAMP, classified in the 351 – 400 group. In all, 67 Brazilian universities are included in the ranking of 1671 universities from all over the world.
According to the Ranking Xangai 2024 (Academic Ranking of World Universities – ARWU), USP continued to hold its position as the best university in Brazil, in the group of 101-150. The Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) is tied in second place with Paulista State University (UNESP) and the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), which are included in the group of 401 – 500. UFRJ and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) follow in the 501-600 group.
This ranking is based on six parameters that include, among others, the number of Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of first-level research publications, and the number of times researchers from each university are cited within their areas of expertise.
In the Folha University Number (RUF) 2023 ranking, USP held first place with 98.85 points and UNICAMP second with 98.20 points. Completing the top 10 are UFRGS (96.29), UFRJ (96.10), UFMG (95.57), Unesp (95.38), Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC, 93.85), Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR, 92.32), Universidade de Brasília (UnB, 92.22) and Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE, 90.12).
The Folha de S.Paulo newspaper establishes an annual ranking. This year included 203 Brazilian universities and took into consideration instructional levels, market placement, research conducted, internationalization, and innovation achievement.