Brazil’s rise from boom-and-bust nation to confident global player has grabbed the attention of foreign universities, who are courting students and administrators of South America’s largest and richest nation in increasing numbers.
In recent weeks, large delegations from Canada and the United States have visited Brazil on fact-finding missions.
The visiting universities are seeking Brazilian partners and offering themselves as possible destinations for some of the 101,000 students the Brazilian government plans to send abroad on scholarships.
Higher education was given a huge boost last year when President Dilma Rousseff announced that Brazil would sponsor the 101,000 students under the Science Without Borders program.
For a nation that sent just 8,786 student to the United States in 2010, the numbers are enormous and have foreign universities flocking south of the equator to fight for a piece of the pie.
But the wannabe partners, as well as those with some experience in Brazil, caution that developing relationships here is rarely easy. Not only are there numerous institutional hoops to jump through in bureaucratic Brazil, but the huge surge of interest in what is now the world’s sixth-largest economy means Brazilians hold the upper hand when deciding on future deals.
“What I noticed is that you tend to arrive thinking you’ve got all the knowledge and information and access to the opportunities that are attractive to Brazilians,” said Malcolm Press, who heads the University of Birmingham’s international efforts in the Americas.
“But we are a small drop in the ocean; a lot of universities around the world are interested in Brazil. So don’t go there thinking they are going to be excited or surprised to see you.”
Mr. Press, who led a joint delegation from England’s Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham to Brazil last year, said visitors can hit the ground running by knowing not only what they want from the Brazilians but what the Brazilians want from them.
Researchers from the two universities returned home from last May’s visit having agreed on research collaborations in biofuels, oil and gas, and the economic impact of sporting events. Brazil is a world leader in the first area, and Britain has long experience in the others.
But the deals took a long time to come to fruition, highlighting Brazil’s inexperience in negotiating with new partners, said Christine Ennew, who heads Nottingham’s internationalization efforts.
“We could be quite flexible in terms of processes and rules, whereas our Brazilian partners found it much more difficult,” Ms. Ennew said. “They had a real system and they felt they had to stick to it. That meant that a lot of the things that we tried to do took a lot longer to get sorted out.”
Brazilians say they can feel overwhelmed by the surge of interest from overseas. Sidney Mello, vice rector at the Federal Fluminense University, in Rio de Janeiro, says he receives delegation almost every a week, three times more than a couple of years ago.
Mr. Mello acknowledges that his university has the upper hand when choosing from this legion of suitors and works hard to firm up deals quickly.
However, he chides foreign universities for being poorly prepared, and sometimes inconsiderate when approaching potential partners.
“Foreign delegations see it much more as a one-way street, with us sending students to them,” Mr. Mello said. “They want our cooperation, they want our resources, and they want to strengthen ties. But they don’t always offer us something in return.”
He also says that visitors sometimes assume that because Brazil is wealthy, and the government is backing new scholarship programs, its universities must well-off be as well.
“I think the most common error is that they think our universities have their own resources to carry out exchanges,” Mr. Mello added. “We have some resources, but not a lot. It is the government agencies that have resources.”
‘Elevator Speeches’
Much of those resources are being channeled into the Science Without Borders program. The scholarships are to be given in the STEM fields, and U.S. and Canadian universities were interested in talking about those disciplines on their recent trips.
Some were pleasantly surprised at how advanced the top Brazilian counterparts are in those fields, and the visitors seemed equally amazed at the possibilities open to them. Brazil has around 2,500 universities, and although only a few are top quality, there are enough of them to present visitors with logistical conundrums.
“Our challenge is being able to drill down to find contacts,” says Devin Lueddeke, director of recruiting at Middlebury College’s Monterey Institute of International Studies, who participated in a trip organized last month by the Institute of International Education. “Until you find the right person, you need to give a lot of elevator speeches and hope that it filters through to where it needs to go. You need to stand out.”
Mr. Press advised newcomers not to limit themselves to the Rio-Brasilia-São Paulo axis. noting that a number of good but less glamorous universities and academic programs operate in the northeast and south of the country.
Communication is also a problem. Almost all of those on the IIE trip said the language gap was significant.
Almost none of the Americans spoke Portuguese, and few of the Brazilians spoke English.
Americans also said that Brazil, for all the attention it was getting, was still largely an unknown quantity compared with other new economic powerhouses like China, India, and Russia. As a result, college presidents and provosts in the United States will need to be educated about the potential benefits.
Money, of course, is a perennial issue, especially for the Americans.
The Brazilian government is paying for 75,000 of the Science Without Borders scholarships, and the private sector is picking up the tab for 26,000 more. But U.S. universities do not have similar scholarships to offer.
“We are all working with tight budgets, so we understand that we are going to have to be creative to secure funds for new initiatives,” says Oly Malpica Proctor, assistant chair of the mathematics department at Brookdale Community College, in New Jersey, who participated in the Institute of International Education trip.
Nevertheless, the potential benefits are clear, say many universities looking to engage in Brazil. But they caution not to expect miracles.
“We may have to focus on the very small number of programs we can be successful at,” says Jeffrey M. Peck, vice provost for global strategies and dean of Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College. “We need to have realistic expectations: Don’t try to do too much. Be patient, realize it takes time.”
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