Unige-Brazil: Identifying Opportunities in a Multifaceted Country
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UNIGE-BRAZIL: IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES IN A MULTIFACETED COUNTRY Written by Etienne Michaud University of Geneva International Relations Office January 2016 TABLE OF CONTENT 1. CONTEXTUALIZATION ....................................................................................... 3 1.1. Overview ................................................................................................................... 3 1.2. Brazilian education in perspective ......................................................................... 5 2. EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM .................................................................................... 6 2.1. History of Brazilian research and education ......................................................... 6 2.2. Current structure ...................................................................................................... 7 3. LEADING HUBS ................................................................................................. 10 3.1. São Paulo ................................................................................................................ 10 3.2. Rio de Janeiro ......................................................................................................... 13 3.3. Minas Gerais ........................................................................................................... 15 3.4. Rio Grande do Sul .................................................................................................. 15 3.5. Distrito Federal ....................................................................................................... 16 3.6. Other leading regions ............................................................................................ 16 4. RANKINGS ......................................................................................................... 16 5. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS ......................................................................... 17 5.1. Overview ................................................................................................................. 17 5.2. Brazil Scientific Mobility Program (Science w/o Borders) ................................. 18 5.3. International summer/winter schools in Brazil .................................................... 19 5.4. Erasmus Mundus ................................................................................................... 20 5.5. Other mobility scholarships .................................................................................. 20 6. COLLABORATION WITH UNIGE ...................................................................... 20 6.1. Exchange agreements ........................................................................................... 20 6.2. Brazilian visitors at UNIGE .................................................................................... 21 6.3. Joint publications ................................................................................................... 23 6.4. Brazil-Swiss Joint Research Program .................................................................. 26 6.5. SNF research projects ........................................................................................... 27 6.6. G3-Brazil .................................................................................................................. 28 6.7. COIMBRA-Brazil ..................................................................................................... 29 6.8. Swissnex Rio de Janeiro ....................................................................................... 30 6.9. Other types of links ................................................................................................ 30 7. RESOURCES ..................................................................................................... 32 8. ANNEXES ........................................................................................................... 33 8.1. Summary of student exchange reports ................................................................ 33 8.2. Brazilian visitors at UNIGE .................................................................................... 36 8.3. Joint publications in close collaboration ............................................................. 43 8.4. Selected contacts at UNIGE .................................................................................. 51 2 1. CONTEXTUALIZATION 1.1. Overview As the B in BRICS, Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world both in terms of population and land area, with 206 million inhabitants and a similar size as continental United States. The lusophone country is divided into one federal district and 26 states (unidades federativas) spread among five regions: North, Northeast, West Central, Southeast and South. The population distribution is very uneven. 22% of the country’s inhabitants live in the state of São Paulo that represents just 3% of Brazilian territory. Conversely, the Northern region is 45% of the country in size but less populated than São Paulo metropolitan area. Generalizations and averages should thus be taken with great care in such a vast and culturally,1 ethnically, geographically and economically diverse country, in particular when it comes to economic and social development, safety issues and – most importantly for the sake of this report – research and education. Figure 1: Map of Brazilian states with population density2 1 The vast majority of Brazilians speak Portuguese, the only official language. German is the second most spoken first language. Some indigenous languages also subsist. 2 Source: http://www.editoradobrasil.com.br/. 3 The most well-known type of diversity in Brazil is ethnical and takes its roots in a number of waves of voluntary and forced migration since the discovery of Brazil in 1500. Between the mid 16th century and the 19th century, the Atlantic slave trade brought close to four million African slaves3, accounting to 40% of all slaves shipped to the Americas. When slavery was finally abolished, the surge of the coffee industry attracted about 4 million Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, German and Arab workers between 1884 and 1959. Brazilian authorities further designed policies that attracted around 160,000 Japanese migrants between 1917 and 1940. In the most recent IBGE census (2010),4 48% of people describe themselves as white, 43% as brown or mixed race, 8% as black, and 1% as Asian or indigenous Indian. The legacies of slavery help explain the structural persistence of inequality in Brazil, which has one the most unequal distributions of wealth globally.5 In 2010, black and mixed-race Brazilians earned half the income of the white, were twice as likely to be analphabets and were less than a third as likely to graduate from university. Figure 2: Colonial legacy: skin color6 and Human Development Index (HDI)7 Blue=white skin, orange=brown or black skin (left) and green=very high HDI, red=very low HDI (right) 3 African slaves in Brazil mostly came from two either Western Africa (Guinea, Ghana, Benin, Guinea- Bissau and Nigeria) or Bantu-language people from Angola, Congo and Mozambique. 4 IBGE Census 2010, http://www.censo2010.ibge.gov.br/ 5 The Brazilian GINI coefficient, the most common measure of wealth inequality, is still in the last decile of all countries for which the World Bank publishes data at 53% (i.e. over 90% of countries are more equal). This holds true despite important improvements brought upon by government-led social welfare programs. When Bolsa Escola (which became Bolsa Família two years later) was launched in 2001, the coefficient was 59%, about the level of Haiti today. 6 Nexo Jornal interactive map of racial segregation in Brazil, https://www.nexojornal.com.br/especial/2015/12/16/O-que-o-mapa-racial-do-Brasil-revela-sobre-a- segrega%C3%A7%C3%A3o-no-pa%C3%ADs 7 Atlas Brasil 2013, United Nations Development Program, http://www.pnud.org.br/Noticia.aspx?id=3751. 4 1.2. Brazilian education in perspective In 2011, the Brazilian government spent 19% of its total expenditure or 6.1% of GDP on education, which is well above the OECD averages of 13% and 5.6%, respectively. The rise in public expenditure on education from 3.5% of GDP in 2000 to 6.1% in 2011 is even the sharpest of all OECD and partner countries. Nevertheless, the annual public spending per student was of USD 2,985 in 2011, just a third of the average for OECD and partner countries at purchasing power parity (PPP) and the second lowest. When considering solely higher education, Brazil spends USD 10,902 per student, 78% of the OECD average. This narrower gap can be explained by the fact that public spending per student in higher education is four times more than in primary or secondary education, the highest differential among all OECD and partner countries. As a result, poorly funded primary and secondary public schools fall behind private schools with seven or fewer students per teacher on average. Conversely, leading universities in Brazil are the highly selective public institutions that receive the bulk of education spending and offer free education (as required by the constitution) to about a quarter of all university students. By construction, this system leads to a paradox; the students whose family could afford the superior private education until high school enroll in leading public universities whereas poorer students end up paying hefty tuition in less prestigious private universities (often working full-time and