- International student mobility has grown exponentially in recent decades, from 3 million students studying abroad in 2005 to over 5 million in 2014. - Asian countries now account for over half of all tertiary students worldwide, while the US role as a top destination is declining. - Brazil has seen rapid growth in students studying abroad through programs like Science Without Borders, but still lags behind countries like China and India in numbers of outbound students. Brazil also struggles to attract many foreign students to its own universities. - To keep up with global trends and opportunities, Brazil needs policies that better link international student mobility to its foreign policy goals of promoting Brazilian culture, values and soft power abroad.

1. 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. 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. 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. 2
a
ed. São Paulo: Ed.
Unesp, 1991.

4. 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. 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. 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. 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
2355449
2510250
3051657
3509708
0
500000
1000000
1500000
2000000
2500000
3000000
3500000
4000000
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Totaloutbound 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. 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 the
Caribbean
North America and Western
Europe
South and West Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa

9. 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. 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
119308
125429
20333 20126
26485 30729
0
20000
40000
60000
80000
100000
120000
140000
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Total outbound internationallymobile tertiary students
studying abroad (Brazil vs South America)
Brazil
South
America

11. 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. 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. 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. 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.