Deployment of strategic performance indicators in Latin American public universities

Jamil Salmi wrote in The Challenge of Establishing World Class Universities (2009) that the University of São Paulo possessed two of the necessary three conditions to become a world class university; a concentration of talent and financial resources, the third leg of his tripod, favourable governance, was to be improved. By extension, the governance model of Latin American Flagship Universities needs institutional agility to implement a strategic vision and form the outward-looking, global view required to be considered among of the world’s great universities. This paper details a research project funded by the São Paulo State Research Council (FAPESP) to analyse the abilities of the three São Paulo state universities to produce consistent, comparable and reliable performance indicators and build capabilities to implement them. The project first carried out an analysis of the existing capacities of the universities, as well as the wider policy framework that formed them. It then brought together decision makers within the universities and research councils, together with the staff responsible for data collection and presentation and researchers in the fields of public policy, scientometry and administration from all three universities