Наука и Образование: научно-техническое издание: BRAZIL: Brazilian Universities Find Challenges in Internationalization

Brazil is not a hot spot on the international academic scene. Universities looking for institutional partners, foreign students looking to study abroad and professors searching for posts in other countries rarely consider Brazil as a first choice. But circumstances are slowly changing.

Brazil's elite higher-education institutions are beginning to embrace internationalisation after decades of insularity. They are more aggressively pursuing professors and students from other countries and setting up ties with institutions abroad.

A number of Brazilian institutions have signed deals recently with universities elsewhere. The University of São Paulo recently arranged a student- and faculty-exchange agreement with China's Henan University. In April, the University of Wisconsin at Madison announced a plan to deepen its ties to Brazil and its higher-education establishment.

The University of São Paulo, which typically is the top-listed Brazilian university in global rankings, has doubled the number of foreign students on its campus, to around 1,600 out of 80,000, over the past four years, says Adnei Melges de Andrade, vice rector for international relations.

However, Brazil remains a tough sell, in large part because it has little tradition of overseas exchanges.

"Unfortunately, Brazilians don't go abroad too much, and Brazil as a destination for international students is not as popular as other destinations in the world," says Francisco Marmolejo, executive director of the Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (and a contributor to The Chronicle's WorldWise blog). "This is a fact. It is not an exclusive problem for Brazil; other countries in Latin America face similar challenges. But considering the size of education systems in Brazil, the numbers are very low."

Brazil also presents a number of obstacles to foreigners, from the obvious, like language and bureaucracy, to the opaque, like the longstanding insularity that has left the South American giant close to invisible in intellectual circles. It may be the fifth-most populous nation in the world, but its universities and academics are only starting to become known.

"There is this enormous ignorance about Brazil outside Brazil," says Mr. Spektor, the Rio professor. "The major academics will think nothing of flying off to conferences in Beijing or Delhi, but they won't fly here."

To compensate, Brazilian universities are trying some new strategies. Mr. Spektor, for example, having failed to snag big names on long-term contracts, is offering them two-week residencies. He hopes that will not only enable his students to hear from international experts at last, but also show the lecturers a side of Brazil that they will talk about back home.

Source - full text of the article: The Chronicle of Higher Education
with reference to University World News

scientific edition of Bauman MSTU

SCIENCE & EDUCATION

Bauman Moscow State Technical University. El № FS 77 - 48211. ISSN 1994-0408