Are the federal universities of Minas Gerais becoming more unequal?Analysis of the production in scientific research and knowledge (2000-2008)

Abstract

The institutes of higher education are important to the professional preparation, as well as to the production of scientific knowledge which is fundamental to advance the frontier of knowledge. The leadership of the UFMG and of the UFV is based on historical indexes that are presented throughout this work, such as the participation of master and doctorate programs, the participation of permanent staff with doctoral titles, the proportion of researchers registered with the CNPq Directorship, and the proportion of research groups registered with the CNPq Directorship. That was the reason for separating, for the purposes of analysis, the federal institutes of higher education of Minas Gerais into two groups: one group classified as relatively more expressive in the production of scientific knowledge (constituted by UFMG and UFV) and another group classified as relatively less expressive in the production of scientific knowledge (constituted by the remaining federal institutes of higher education of Minas Gerais, namely, CEFET/MG, UFJF, UFLA, UFOP, UFSJ, UFTM, UFU, UFVJM, UNIFAL e UNIFEI). Based on the hypothetical conception of these two groups, it was possible to verify the trajectory of convergence/divergence of the agents that compose them in what concerns some basic indexes of the production of knowledge: a) number of research groups by university; b) number of researchers by university; and c) number of publications by university. The Theil index was used to measure inequality for the period 2000-2008.