KRIS SNIBBE
Campus at Harvard University: pioneer
its talent,” says Paul Davidson, president of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. In May of this year, the University Alliance Metropolis Ruhr (UAMR), a consortium of three German universities, launched a Brazil office in Rio de Janeiro. The schools, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Technische Universität Dortmund and Universität Duisburg-Essen, also have plans to open a São Paulo office. UAMR’s decision to open a Brazilian office was strategic, with a vision that goes far beyond simply filling its campuses with Brazilians. They want brainpower. Specifically, the schools hope to foster “brain gain”: the opposite of the well-known term “brain drain”, which usually refers to the
scenario of national talent abandoning a home country in search of better opportunities, according to Christoph de Oliveira Käppler from Technische Universität Dortmund, who was for several years a visiting professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). He notes that while the student population in Germany will decline in the future, Brazil offers a growing pool of students who can study, do research, teach and become experts in their fields. The search, therefore, is for embryonic talent. To attract candidates, some key barriers have fallen: flu-
ency in German is no longer a prerequisite to enroll in the programs offered. Once arriving in the country, Brazilians may enroll in semesterlong intensive Germany language training. As foreign universities set their sights on Brazilian brainpower, Brazil is at the same time attuned to the potential for high-level training of its talent abroad. Interestingly, all this attention comes just as the Brazilian government has made study abroad a priority for Brazilian students. The goal is honing of talent, so that with comprehensive training, students may become actors in the international insertion of Brazil. In April, President Dilma Rousseff announced 75,000 additional scholarships for students from the high school to the postdoctoral level seeking to study abroad. Students have been responding. The number of Brazilians studying abroad can only grow, and this figure has nearly quadrupled since 2004, when 42,000 Brazilian students went abroad, growing to 160,000 students in 2010, considering all levels of education (see other numbers in the table on page 72). These figures are set to increase even more. “Brazil is the next big thing, everyone is interested in what is going on in the country,” explains Thomas Trebat, the executive director of Columbia University’s Institute of Latin American Studies, and head of the Institute’s Center for Brazilian Studies. The school, which recently launched Global Gateway Offices in Beijing, Paris, Amman, and Mumbai, has plans to open two such centers
The number of Brazilian students abroad has quadrupled since 2004
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