5º Encontro Nacional da Associação Brasileira de Relações

Internacionais (ABRI)

“Diplomacia num Mundo em Transformação”

INTERNATIONAL STUDENT MOBILITY:

GLOBAL TRENDS AND LESSONS FOR

BRAZIL

Área Temática: Análise de Política Externa

RAFAEL SCHLEICHER

Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz)

Universidade do Distrito Federal (UDF)

BELO HORIZONTE – MG, BRAZIL

31 DE JULHO DE 2015

2

ABSTRACT

Tertiary-Level Student Mobility is a special pattern of migration. While the phenomenon has

also grown exponentially during the last decade, from 3 million in 2005 to 5 million in 2014

(OECD estimates), Asian countries accounted for more than half of the students enrolled in

tertiary education worldwide since 2011. In addition, OECD data also reveals that the role of

the United States as a destination has been declining, opening room for other English-

speaking countries and non-traditional destinations. Given the scenario, how is Brazil

responding to the recent global trends in the university-level student mobility? The analysis

proposed in the article is built upon the idea that there is a growing interest for diversification

in student mobility in the world, which opens considerable room for many foreign policy

strategies in the area of higher education. In the one hand, while the results of the Brazilian

Federal student mobility stimulus are still timid (30,000 in 2012) in comparison to other

emerging countries such as China (695,000 in 2012) and India (190,000 in 2012), on the

other, there is an unexplored Brazilian presence in many countries, such as the United

States (almost 9,000 students in 2012). In addition, Brazil has been sending students to

traditional countries, such as United States, United Kingdom, France, Portugal, Spain and

Germany, while there is an ever growing interest of countries like Australia, China and India

for Brazilian students. Moreover, Brazil has been unsuccessful in attracting foreign students

to Brazilian Universities. Even though Brazilian Universities hardly ever offer programs in

languages other than Portuguese, UNESCO data for 2012 shows that only 30% of the

15,000 foreign students in Brazil came from Portuguese-speaking countries. The article

concludes that foreign policy action and involvement is imperative for keeping track of the

opportunities and exploring new venues in the international system.

KEYWORDS: International Student Mobility, Brazilian Foreign Policy, Brazilian Higher

Education Policy

3

1. Introduction

International mobility for the purposes of continued studies in higher education is not a

new phenomenon. Traditionally, the very nature of academic research implies the ability to

build cross-institutional and cross-border networks, allowing the progressive development of

knowledge, innovation and science. In the traditional university model, one in which teaching

and research activities are intertwined, international mobility has been regarded as a regular

activity. What is relatively new, however, is the scale, amplitude and meaning that the

international mobility phenomenon has reached in the last decade (2004-2014).

Numbers from the Institute of International Education (IIE) released in 2014 highlight

three insightful trends regarding international student mobility for the period 2001-2014. The

first, and most impressive, is the fact that the number of international students1 more than

doubled in the period. In 2001, there was an average of 2.1 million students, while in 2014

the number reached 4.5 million students. The second, and coherent to the perceptions of the

hegemonic growth of China in the World, is the change in terms of host and sending

countries. While the US represented 28% of international students in 2001, in 2014 the

proportion fell to 20%. China, in its turn, was able to raise its participation from less than 1%

in 2001 to 8% of the total international students in 2014. Thirdly, there is an imbalance in the

global flow of students, both in terms of regions that send more students than they receive –

which raise questions on deliberate “brain-drain” policy strategies – and in what regards the

proportion of international students vis-à-vis local students enrolled in higher education

programs.

There seems to be four underlying reasons that help framing the recent boom in the

numbers of international mobility in higher education. The first one is directly related to the

advancement of transportation-related technologies, which lowered the costs of

intercontinental and regional travels. Secondly, the progressive changes in the economic

structures of many rich countries from labor-intensive to knowledge-intensive have raised the

educational demands, the innovation needs, and the number of years an average student

must spend in Tertiary-Level Education.2 The third is related to the growth of global

population in the last decades, implying that there will be an ever increasing demand for

higher education in most regions of the world. Fourthly, the average wealth of emerging

powers has grown considerably, allowing an even greater population of youngsters to access

higher education programs, nationally and abroad.

1 According to ODCE “International students are those students who left their country of origin and moved to

another country for the purpose of study.” 2 TOFFLER, Alvin. The Future Shock. New York: Random House, 1970; TOFFLER, Alvin. A terceira onda. 21

a ed.

Rio de Janeiro: Record, 1995; GIDDENS, Anthony. As conseqüências da modernidade. 2a ed. São Paulo: Ed.

Unesp, 1991.

4

International mobility is also an interesting example on how knowledge has become an

important currency for relations between states, on how the ability to shape the preferences

of others is becoming more dependent of immaterial resources such as knowledge, values

and culture. In other words, as Joseph Nye precisely depicts when discussing some

forgotten elements of the American leadership in the World, “(…) soft power rests on the

ability to the shape the preference of others”.3 Knowledge and culture are fundamentally

intertwined, being important sources of attractiveness for a country.

Brazil is a paradox when it comes to the relation between international student mobility

and the effective use of knowledge/culture as soft power. Firstly, the country displays an ever

increasing demand for higher education. The National Institute of Education and Research

(INEP, in Portuguese) estimated that in 2012 Brazil had nearly 2,400 higher education

institutions (INEP; 2014), but compared to the average of OECD countries, Brazil has 2.5

times less adult individuals holding a diploma degree. INEP data also shows that only 19% of

the whole population of individuals between 18-24 years-old currently hold or expect to

receive a diploma degree (ibid). Secondly, and even though the demand for higher education

has been increasing, Brazilian Universities have been facing progressive downgrades in

international university rankings, mainly due to poor performance in internationalization and

innovation criteria. In the 2014-2015 Times ranking, Brazil only had two universities among

the world top-400. The 2014-2015 QS University Ranking displays three Brazilian

universities. It comes with no surprise that a 2014 survey conducted by the Pew Research

Center’s “Global Attitudes Project” revealed that 71% of the Brazilians disapproved Ms.

Rousseff’s educational policies.4

Ms. Rousseff’s government has promoted a wide international mobility policy program,

known as “Science without Borders”. Created in 2011, the Program has allowed more than

78,000 graduate and undergraduate students to enroll in foreign higher education institutions

(CAPES; May 2015).5 Even though the Program has artificially changed the outbound

mobility numbers of Brazilian Students, it is a centralized time-bound strategy that disregards

the importance of inbound mobility and, most importantly, the relations between higher

educational policies and the Brazilian Foreign Policy goals.

3 NYE, Joseph. Soft Power: the means to success in world politics. New York: Public Affairs, 2004.

4 In the same survey, the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitude Project asked a sample of the Brazilian

population to answer the following question: “I am going to read you a list of things that might be important for getting ahead in life. On a scale of 0 to 10, in your opinion, how important is it...to have a good education to get ahead in life, where 0 means not important at all and 10 means very important?.” An impressive 76% of the sample marked “10 – Very important” and 12% of the sample marked “9”. Available at: http://www.pewglobal.org/. Last access in June 6

th 2015.

5 Available at: http://www.cienciasemfronteiras.gov.br/web/csf/bolsistas-pelo-mundo. Last access in June 6

th

2015;

5

This paper intends to provide a framework for debate on how Brazil is responding to the

current global trends and challenges in higher education, considering the “international

student mobility” as a privileged object of studies in the field of International Relations. The

proposed methodology is based on a comparison between the global trends on international

student mobility and the Brazilian national policy responses to the phenomenon.

The lack of reliable and up-to-date data on global student mobility is a well-known

difficulty that poses serious analytical problems. Consequently, the discussion on Inbound-

Outbound student mobility will heavily rely on information provided by the “Education at a

Glance”6 series of the Organization for Economic Development Cooperation (OECD) and on

data from UNESCO’s Institute of Statistics (UIS). When appropriate, information from the

“Project Atlas”7 of the International Institute of International Education (IIE) will be presented.

Once international mobility is relatively new to the field of International Relations, this essay

intends to be less theoretical and more descriptive, both in terms of the phenomenon and the

subsequent policy responses provided by Brazil.

Concerning the policy responses of Brazil, the essay will emphasize the “Science without

Borders” as the current most important outbound strategy of the Brazilian government and

the “Programa Estudante-Convênio” Undergraduate and Graduate (PEC-G and PEC-PG) as

the most significant policy for inbound student mobility. In other words, the inbound-outbound

dynamics will be the basis of comparison for between the global trends and the Brazilian

policy responses.

The concluding section recalls the importance of international student mobility to

attraction and soft power related strategies of the Brazilian Foreign Policy. In the current

scenario, the outbound mobility policies are dominated by the Ministry of Education while the

inbound mobility policies – the most important element to disseminate Brazilian values,

identities and practices to the World – have been relegated as secondary. Developing an

internationalization strategy for higher education in Brazil may provide the missing link

between the inbound-outbound dynamics and the value-based foreign policy Brazil projects

to the World.

2. Global trends in International Student Mobility

The most comprehensive sets of data concerning tertiary education and global student

mobility are yearly produced by the Organization for Economic Development Cooperation

(OECD) and UNESCO’s Institute of Statistics (UIS). OECD’s “Education at a Glance” project

6 Available at http://www.oecd.org/education/eag.htm

7 Available at http://www.iie.org/Research-and-Publications/Project-Atlas

6

relies on data collected among the 34 OECD member countries plus Brazil and Russia. This

introductory section intends to provide a general picture of the tertiary education in OECD

countries for 2012. The next two sections will provide inbound-outbound trends based on

UNESCO’s data for international student mobility in the globe.

The first significant set of indicators concerning tertiary education is the number of

adults8 that hold a degree during a given time span. In 2012, OECD estimated that an

average of 33% of its adults hold a tertiary-level diploma, meaning that in average, one in

every three adults had tertiary-level education. The number is significant considering that in

2000 only 22% of the population had a tertiary-level degree, representing an average annual

growth of more than 3%. OECD estimated that only 13% of the Brazilian adult population had

a tertiary-level degree in 2012, 150% less than the OECD average. In order to cover the

whole population over 18 years-old, the average percentage of the OECD young population

estimated to conclude tertiary level education in 2012 was 39%, while in Brazil it was 18%.

The second significant set of indicators is the average age of graduates among

OECD countries. Comparing data from 1995 to 2012, OECD concludes that there has been

a 22% increase in the average age of graduates, which as 26-years-old in 2012. OECD

estimated that the typical age of conclusion in Brazil was 29 in 2012. Even though the

average age of graduation in Brazil is almost 10% higher than the average of OECD

countries, the employment rates in 2012 were nearly the same for adult individuals holding a

tertiary-level degree (84% OECD and 86% for Brazil). However, it should be noted that the

relative earnings do not follow the same trend of employment rates: while the 2012 average

difference in earnings between a worker with a secondary degree and another worker with a

tertiary degree in ODCE is 60%, in Brazil the difference reaches 160%.

The third, and the last set of indicators, relates to the level of expenditure/investment

in tertiary education. In what regards the yearly costs per student in tertiary education, ODCE

average is nearly US$ 14,000, while in Brazil the costs per student reach almost US$

11,000. The average ODCE country invested more than 1.5% of its GDP in tertiary

education, while Brazil barely reached 1% of its GDP in 2012. Finally, the average of public

investment in tertiary education in ODCE countries was 69.2% in 2011. No data was

available for Brazil.

2.1 Outbound Mobility

Outbound mobility has grown exponentially since the early 2000’s, with an average

growth rate of 6.36% since 2001, according to data provided by UNESCO, displayed in Table

8 ODCE considers “adult” a person who is over 25 years old and below 64 years old.

7

1 and stylized in the graph below. It should be noted, however, that numbers from UNESCO

and numbers provided by ODCE and IIE diverge in what concerns the exact figures for the

year 2012. IIE and ODCE estimate that in 2012 there were 4.5 million tertiary-level students

studying abroad. IIE and OCDE data set also range from 1975 (800 thousand tertiary-level

students living abroad) to 2012. In either set of data, the trend of growth of global student

mobility is well perceived.

One interesting feature in outbound mobility is the role of the upper middle income

countries in boosting the numbers from 2000 to 2012. As seen in Table 2 below, numbers

typically doubled in the period for all the given income levels, except for upper middle income

level, which has nearly grown three times in the same period.

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (http://w w w .uis.unesco.org/Education/Pages/tertiary-education.aspx)

1788133

23554492510250

3051657

3509708

0

500000

1000000

1500000

2000000

2500000

3000000

3500000

4000000

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Total outbound internationally mobile tertiary students studying abroad

TABLE 1 – TOTAL OUTBOUND INTERNATIONALLY MOBILE TERTIARY STUDENTS STUDYING ABROAD

Time 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

TOTAL 1788133 1892651 2139182 2355449 2382864 2500088 2510250 2668319 2839866 3051657 3239356 3429881 3509708

Africa 230904 247591 281758 312963 311310 317075 324895 333994 345262 363874 380965 401773 404284

Asia 776640 829377 978758 1114431 1190472 1271748 1270246 1368384 1501902 1637883 1742692 1862361 1915283

Europe 573260 597269 627260 661691 618457 638414 634768 661561 678490 721008 774448 824171 850391

North America

120237 128422 146739 153796 153861 161352 165949 174036 172995 178751 181319 179821 181568

South America

64971 67037 79675 87814 81775 85826 87055 101635 111816 119308 128253 129413 125429

Oceania 22121 22956 24992 24754 26989 25673 27337 28709 29402 30833 31680 32342 32753

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Pages/tertiary-education.aspx)

8

TABLE 2 – TOTAL OUTBOUND INTERNATIONALLY MOBILE TERTIARY STUDENTS STUDYING ABROAD

Income Level 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Low income countries 92464 108666 122094 117729 123578 129917 145223 160041 171034 190350 207007 206554

Lower middle income countries

363335 428913 470092 495180 530266 544130 591218 657184 706348 728296 751643 749633

Middle income countries 952221 1126968 1296812 1378114 1461827 1470959 1572932 1728583 1865001 1981801 2115295 2168882

Upper middle income countries

588886 698055 826720 882934 931561 926829 981713 1071399 1158653 1253505 1363652 1419250

High income countries 847360 902701 935665 885483 913051 907820 948645 949605 1013933 1065433 1105793 1130468

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Pages/tertiary-education.aspx)

2.2 Inbound Mobility

Inbound mobility data for specific countries is not as precise as the region-level data.

Again, UNESCO Institute for Statistics data differs from data provided by IIE and ODCE.

Even considering a margin of error, the main trend in inbound mobility is well noted in the

graph below, built from UNESCO data. Even though some Asian countries are stimulating

foreign tertiary-level students to study in their university-level programs, North America and

Western Europe continue to be the top-destination for tertiary-level students in the World. As

ODCE notes, 75% of all foreign tertiary-level students were enrolled in an ODCE country in

2012.

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (http://w w w .uis.unesco.org/Education/Pages/tertiary-education.aspx)

256.958417.34740.412

784.327

62.468

2.279.068

38.447

130.285

Students from abroad studying in a given region (2012)

Arab States

Central and Eastern Europe

Central Asia

East Asia and the Pacific

Latin America and theCaribbeanNorth America and WesternEuropeSouth and West Asia

Sub-Saharan Africa

9

3 Brazil and International Student Mobility

The Higher Education system in Brazil is composed by an extensive network of public

and private institutions. According to INEP, in 2012 the whole network included 2,416 higher

education institutions, distributed among 193 Universities, 2,044 Faculties, 139 University-

Centers and 40 Federal Institutes (IF) / Federal Centers of Technological Education

(CEFET). Data from INEP also seem to reveal three enduring trends in the Brazilian higher

education policy and structure.

The first is the unbalanced and uneven distribution between public and private

concentrations of higher education institutions vis-à-vis the total number of enrollments.

Among the 2,416 higher education institutions in Brazil, 2,112 are private (87.5%) and only

304 are public (12.5%). According to INEP, in 2012, private institutions represented a joint

offer of 20,961 undergraduate courses, while public institutions offered 10,905

undergraduate courses. Put bluntly, while a typical private higher education institution offers

an average of 10 undergraduate courses, a typical public institution offers 3.6 times more

undergraduate courses.

The second trend explains the ever increasing interest of private institutions in the

Brazilian higher education market: the demand for higher education in Brazil has grown

considerably in the last decades, mostly due to the growth of the Brazilian population. Data

from INEP also reveals that each private institution is responsible for an average of 2,400

students, while each public institution is responsible for an average of nearly 8,200

undergraduate students. In other words, nearly 5 million undergraduate students in Brazil

(approximately 70% of the total undergraduate population) have to pay for its higher

education either directly or indirectly, by using public financing (FIES) or public scholarships

(PROUNI). The numbers seem worrisome if one compares the 40% growth in the

enrollments figures for the period 2009-2012 with the 4.5% increase in the number of higher

education institutions in the same period. Data seem to reveal a suboptimal offer of higher

education courses in Brazil.

The third trend is related to the quality of higher education in Brazil. As said, the higher

education system is predominantly private, but such predominance is not reflected in the two

most important international rankings: Times9 and QS.10 Considering the Times, since 2011

9 The Times Higher Education Ranking uses thirteen performance indicators, divided in five different areas:

Teaching (30%), Research (30%), Citations (30%), International Outlook (7.5%), and Industry Income (2.5%). Available at http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/ 10

The QS Ranking uses a set of indicators distributed among: Academic Reputation (40%); Employer Reputation (10%); Faculty/Student Ratio (20%); Citations per Faculty (20%); International Student Ratio (5%); International Staff Ratio (5%). Available at http://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankings

10

only the University of São Paulo and University of Campinas figure in the top-400 universities

of the World. The QS ranking includes a third Brazilian institution, the Federal University of

Rio de Janeiro. From The Times Ranking displayed below it is possible to visualize that the

quality of teaching, internationalization, and research in the top Brazilian Universities vis-à-

vis other universities in the World have been declining. The low scores on “international

outlook” are related to the self-centered nature of the higher education institutions in Brazil,

both in terms of the incapacity to attract and send students/professors and to develop a clear

internationalization strategy to strengthen and widen its teaching/research responsibilities.

TABLE 3 – RANKING TIMES TOP 400: BRAZIL (2011-2015)

University Criteria 2012 2011

2013 2012

2013 2014

2014 2015

Universidade de São Paulo

Ranking (178) (158) (226-250) (201-225)

Teaching 61.7% 63% 47.2% 51.6%

International Outlook 22.9% 24.5% 24.9% 25.3%

Industry Income 33.3% 40% 40.1% 40.1%

Research 58% 65.7% 50.8% 51.6%

Citations 18.8% 30.2% 29.4% 32.3%

Universidade de Campinas

Ranking (276-300) (251-255) (301-350) (301-350)

Teaching 52.3% 51.7% 41.3% 43.4%

International Outlook 19.1% 20.9% 19% 20.7%

Industry Income 43.2% 44.9% 49% 44.5%

Research 33.1% 46.8% 37.5% 38.8%

Citations 15.2% 26.5% 27.9% 28%

Given the drastic modifications in the international student mobility and the higher

educational needs in Brazil and elsewhere, two public policies were structured to deal

directly to with the mobility needs in Brazil, the Science without Borders Program (outbound

mobility) and the sixty-year “Programa Estudante-Convênio” (inbound mobility). The essay

now turns its attention to the characteristics of both programs.

3.1 Outbound Mobility

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (http://w w w .uis.unesco.org/Education/Pages/tertiary-education.aspx)

87814 87055

119308125429

20333 2012626485 30729

0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

120000

140000

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Total outbound internationally mobile tertiary students studying abroad (Brazil vs South America)

Brazil

SouthAmerica

11

UNESCO data displayed in the graph above provides an interesting point of departure for

analyzing both the global trends of international mobility and how Brazil has been responding

to the challenges. At first glance, Brazil represented less than 1% of the total outbound

international mobile students in 2012, which is relatively low for the number of tertiary-level

students in Brazil and for the income-level of the country. Two observations must be made in

in this regard. The first is that the outbound mobility of Brazilian students has been growing

consistently since 2006, which is totally at odds with the aggregate data for South America.

The second observation is that the Science without Borders program was officially created in

2011, but its first concrete results were expected to come in the late 2012 and 2013.

The main strategy of the Brazilian Federal Government to cope with the mobility-quality

of education imperative was created by the Decree 7642/11 of December 2011. The

Science without Borders program guarantees considerable resources for the mobility of

students, researchers, professors, among other groups involved directly or indirectly with

tertiary-level teaching-research activities.11

Preliminary data from the Science without Borders program collected up to June 15th

2015 demonstrate that more than 78,000 mobility scholarships had been granted to allow

Brazilians to study abroad. In other words, the Science without Borders program have

boosted in 160% the mobility numbers in comparison to the UNESCO 2012 outbound

mobility data for Brazil. As CAPES/Ministry of Education official has recently stated, it

expects to update the numbers of the Science without Borders very soon, raising the total

number of Brazilian outbound mobile students benefited from the program to more than 100

thousand since 2012.

3.2 Inbound Mobility

Brazil is considered to be the most representative destination of foreign students in the

Latin America and the Caribbean Region and, more specifically, a magnet for mobile

11

“Art. 2º - São objetivos do Programa Ciência sem Fronteiras: I - promover, por meio da concessão de bolsas de estudos, a formação de estudantes brasileiros, conferindo-lhes a oportunidade de novas experiências educacionais e profissionais voltadas para a qualidade, o empreendedorismo, a competitividade e a inovação em áreas prioritárias e estratégicas para o Brasil; II - ampliar a participação e a mobilidade internacional de estudantes de cursos técnicos, graduação e pós-graduação, docentes, pesquisadores, especialistas, técnicos, tecnólogos e engenheiros, pessoal técnico-científico de empresas e centros de pesquisa e de inovação tecnológica brasileiros, para o desenvolvimento de projetos de pesquisa, estudos, treinamentos e capacitação em instituições de excelência no exterior; III - criar oportunidade de cooperação entre grupos de pesquisa brasileiros e estrangeiros de universidades, instituições de educação profissional e tecnológica e centros de pesquisa de reconhecido padrão internacional; IV - promover a cooperação técnico-científica entre pesquisadores brasileiros e pesquisadores de reconhecida liderança científica residentes no exterior por meio de projetos de cooperação bilateral e programas para fixação no País, na condição de pesquisadores visitantes ou em caráter permanente”

12

students from the Portuguese-speaking Africa. As the graph below demonstrates, Brazil itself

was the destination of nearly 25% of foreign students who came to the Latin America and the

Caribbean Region. UNESCO data reveals that out of the 15,000 foreign students who came

to Brazil in 2012, Angolan and Guinean tertiary-level students were the most representative

(1,675 and 819, respectively). Argentina and Paraguay tertiary-level students are the third

and the fourth most significant (776 and 772, respectively). One interesting feature about the

inbound tertiary-level students in Brazil is the diversity in their countries of origin.

It is no coincidence that the top four nationalities of inbound tertiary-level students in

Brazil are two countries of Africa and two from the Southern Cone. Since 1965 Brazil has

been making coordinated efforts to build a network of partners to cooperate in the area of

education and mobility. The terms and mobility conditions for foreign undergraduate and

graduate students are regulated by the Decree 7948/2013, even though the first support

program for foreign students willing to enroll in undergraduate courses in Brazil had been

created in 1965 (“Programa Estudante-Convênio-Graduação”, PEC-G) and for graduates in

1981 (“Programa Estudante-Convênio – Pós Graduação”, PEC-PG). Both programs are

currently administrated in conjunction by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry

of Education (MEC) and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI).

For undergraduates, the program offers a free-of-charge option to attend a Brazilian

University. As for the graduates, and in addition to the the exemption of tuition costs, the

Brazilian government usually offers a monthly allowance of R$ 1,500 for master degree

candidates and R$ 2,200 for doctorate students, plus the return flight tickets. Usually,

CAPES/MEC is responsible for the selection process and administration of doctorate-level

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (http://w w w .uis.unesco.org/Education/Pages/tertiary-education.aspx)

62.468

15.221

0

10.000

20.000

30.000

40.000

50.000

60.000

70.000

Latin America and the Caribbean Brazil

Students from abroad studying in Latin America & Caribbean vs Brazil (2012)

13

scholarships and CNPq/MCTI is responsible for the selection process and administration of

masters-level scholarships.

Since its creation in 1965 to the year of 2013, PEC-G has given support to nearly 6,000

foreign students. The most representative foreign students were from Cape Verde (2,657),

Guinea (1,336) and Angola (583), reinforcing the perception that Brazil is a natural magnet

for tertiary-level students from Portuguese speaking countries. The numbers of PEC-PG,

though, demonstrate a tendency of attracting tertiary-level students from the South America

region. From its creation in 1981 to the year of 2013, PEC-PG has benefited 1,625 masters

and doctorate students. Colombia (558), Peru (280) and Argentina (124) have been the most

typical origin of foreign students.

4 Final Remarks: Lessons for Brazil

What can be learned from the trends in the global mobility of tertiary-level students? So

far, how has Brazil responded to the global changes in tertiary-level education? What can be

done to improve both the quality of tertiary level-education in Brazil and, in a broader sense,

the foreign image/identity of Brazil to the World?

Global trends in international student mobility up to 2012 seem to deliver a clear

message: internationalization is not an option for universities and other higher education

institutions. If on the one hand the most developed regions in the World are sending part of

its students abroad for a comprehensive educational experience, on the other, they are also

investing massively in the attraction of the World’s brightest minds. Mobility should not be

understood exclusively as student-exchange programs or temporary migration. Knowledge

and innovation are important sources of soft power that may strengthen of weaken the

chances of attraction and leadership in international politics.12 Data also reveals that upper-

middle income countries are increasing support for inbound and outbound mobility. China

and South Korea are remarkable examples in this regard.

There are many problems in the Brazilian response to the global changes in international

mobility and tertiary-level education. At the policy-level, there are clear signs that the two

main public policies for international student mobility, Science without Borders (outbound)

and the Programa Estudante-Convênio (inbound), are parts of an internationalization

strategy for higher education in Brazil that still doesn’t exist.

In what regards the Science without Borders program, and even considering that it may

have had a positive impact in terms of the general mobility numbers for Brazil, there are still

12

NYE, Joseph. Soft Power, Hard Power and Leadership. Seminar at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government on October 27

th, 2006. Available at:

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/netgov/files/talks/docs/11_06_06_seminar_Nye_HP_SP_Leadership.pdf

14

many problems to tackle. The first is the excessive centralization of resources and decisions

at the Ministry of Education and its main supporting agency, CAPES. As Knight points out,

internationalization is always a simultaneous two-level strategy, at the policy level and the

local university level.13 Secondly, the program poses an unjustifiable focus in natural

sciences, health sciences and engineering, restricting international mobility in other

knowledge-areas, such as social sciences and law.

Concerning the main inbound strategy of Brazil, the Programa Estudante-Convênio, the

current numbers in comparison to foreign initiatives doesn’t seem to justify a self-proclaimed

“soft power” image for Brazil. Only in the year of 2012, Brazil sent two times more students

abroad than it received. The proportion of the 15,000 foreign tertiary-level students in Brazil

in 2012 to the whole 7.5 million tertiary level students in Brazil estimated by INEP is way

below the average of ODCE countries, both in relative and absolute numbers. Again, the

issue of centralization of resources is an important restriction to consider, separating the

bureaucracies from CAPES and CNPq to the street-level bureaucracies represented by the

higher education institutions in Brazil.

In sum, current global trends reveal that international mobility is linked to well-planned

country-level internationalization policies for higher education and foreign policy strategies.

An inclusive and comprehensive discussion about a future Brazilian internationalization

policy/strategy may provide a solid framework for integrating existent programs and plan new

ones. Such a course of action may also help policy-makers visualizing that inbound and

outbound results depend on cooperative work in the areas of education and foreign policy.

13

KNIGHT, Jane. “An internationalization model: responding to new realities and challenges”. In DE WIT, Hans et. at. (Eds.) Higher education in Latin America: the international dimension. Washington: The World Bank. 420pg; and KNIGHT, J. “Internationalization remodeled: Definition, approaches, and rationales”. Journal of Studies in International Education, 2004, 8(1), 5-31.