Avaliações

E que dizer daquele relatório, tão falando recentemente sobre o "estado de saúde" da UMa e a sua ligação à sociedade regional, documento que não está disponível no site da Universidade da Madeira, para que desta forma todos os madeirenses possam saber ao que ali é dito? Entretanto podemos aceder ao "INSTITUTIONAL SELF-EVALUATION REPORT", da autoria da própria UMa, e que, confiorme é refetrido, foi "SUBMITTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MADEIRA TO THE EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY ASSOCIATION", e elaborado em Abril de 2008. Nele é feito um retrato genérico da instituição da autoria de Telhado Pereira: "The University is the youngest and the smallest of the Portuguese Public Universities, congregating both university and polytechnic education. This year the University is celebrating its 20th anniversary, with approximately 2.929 undergraduates (first cycle) and 391 graduate students (310 in the second cycle and 81 in the third cycle sudents). The teaching staff comprises 252 members, with some of them working part-time (equivalent to 196.68 full timers). There are 127 non-teaching staff members. Currently, 56% of the teaching staff holds a Ph.D, reaching 60% if only university education is counted. Despite being low by EU standards, this ratio has been raising from 40% in 2004 up to a predictable 72% by the end of this year. UMa is perceived as a small teaching/research university and its faculty do their outmost to have their research outcome published in international peer-reviewed journals. As further evidenced in this report, the number of published papers has been increasing over the past years as well as a rise of their average impact factor". A que se junta a seguinte consideração:"The University has an important social role. First, it has the highest rate of students with financial aid among the Portuguese Universities (in the second highest GNP per capita region in Portugal), meaning that around 30% of its students could not pursue their studies in the Mainland due to lack of resources. Second, the University has been organizing scientific and cultural events open to the community and inviting external experts, which would, otherwise, never take place in the Region. Third, and of utmost importance too, stands out the high percentage of working or part-time students. Budget constraints are a real problem for the University. For four years, the University hashad extra financing of more than 10% of the transfer from the State to pay for new projects and for additional costs of displacement. The former government granted this extra fund up to December 31st 2007, without renewal. So, this year, the University does not have enough budget to pay for all its expenditures". Refira-se que este documento de auto-avaliação, foi redigido pelo grupo nomeado pelo Despacho Reitoral nº 6/R/2008, e foi enviado à European University Association, o qual serviu de base à visita da "Evaluation Team", que esteve nos dias 8 e 9 de Maio de visita à UMa, e é composta pelas seguintes entidades: Robin Farquhar, Professor Emeritus da Universidade de Carleton, Canadá, Don McQuillan, Professor da National University of Ireland, Dublin,Bent Schmidt-Nielsen, Rector, The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Denmark, Mary Ritter, Pro-Rector, Imperial Colege of London, England, Vanja Ivosevic, Student, Croatian Student Union, Croatia.