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
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8.International Student Mobility - Global Trends and Lessons for Brazil (Schleicher,Rafael)
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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
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
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
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.