Month: March 2012

My perception of Science w/o Borders evolved during this visit. At first I saw the simple practical task of moving thousands of Brazilian kids to American universities in order to improve their educational opportunities. Of course, this is still the key task along the critical path, but it is not the big picture or the ultimate destination. The final destination is the internationalization or the re-internationalization (as I wrote in an earlier post) of Brazilian higher education. 

Their American experience will indeed change and enrich the lives of the individual students.  But the experience such a large cohort brings back to Brazil will also change Brazilian education. In addition to its size, this is a well-targeted program. The Brazilian students will be chosen from all over the country. They are already in place to become future leaders of the country. Their already sunny prospects will be further brightened by their international experience, the things they learn and the connections they make, not least of which the connections they make among each other, the Pygmalion effect at work. 

They will bring greater internationalization to Brazilian education. For each one that travels in the first waves, dozens will follow along the paths created and widened.  Beyond that, they will come back with new habits and different expectations.

Our Brazilian friends liked the flexibility of the American system. Brazil still uses something much more like the old inherited European system. There is not a lot of flexibility and tends to be less cooperation among departments than there is today in the U.S. This is true even within universities, not to mention among institutions or with outside private firms. American universities were like this but they had to change to adapt to the new realities, as I wrote in an earlier post.

We couldn’t keep the doughboys in their old habits when they came home after seeing Europe. The popular song “How ya gonna keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree” reflected this.  Science w/o Borders affects nowhere near as many people and is nothing like the intensity, but it does have the advantage of concentration.  Smaller numbers will have high leverage in the relatively rarefied, if rapidly growing, Brazilian higher-education environment. This is also a time of maximum leverage. Brazilian higher-education is in a transition, as is the country. 

I understand that I am repeating many of the same themes. Maybe I should sometime combine related posts and make them more coherent, but I am writing day-to-day.

My picture up top show the SwB group at the Brazilian Embassy, where we were invited to give a readout of our various visits. We had a reception at the residence that evening.  The second picture shows the entrance at Meridian House.  Meridian House organized the program and we did a discussion there.

Our groups of Brazilian education leaders went East, West and Center to learn about Americans higher education and to explore opportunities for linkages, especially Science w/o Borders. Then we came back to together, gathering in Washington to discuss our experiences. We went all over the country, but we seem to have had remarkably similar experiences. I suppose that is because the ingredients were the same: Brazilian & American higher education folks talking about their interest in internationalizing their programs. There were some variations. 

One significant difference evidently was the fame of Science w/o Borders. In the Eastern campaign, we had to explain details of Science w/o Borders, but most of our interlocutors already knew a lot about the program.  Our Western group reported less general knowledge of the program. I can think of several reasons why this might be true. I also have considered the possibility that it might simply be a perception difference on our part or self-fulfilling, i.e. we got what we expected. But I don’t think it much matters. One of the central goals of our trip was to inform and persuade. In this we succeeded. Whether it was explaining details to the already reasonably well-informed or bringing new information to the erstwhile benighted, they’ve got it right now.  

We found almost an embarrassment of riches. The American higher-education system provides more opportunities than can be exploited. A welcome challenge is the choosing among the many opportunities, but we should not believe that the beguiling number and variety of choices is not a serious challenge.  Two extremes must be avoided.  Our Brazilians friends are aware that they need to take care not to concentrate too much on a few places or dissipate their resources and people across to broad a spectrum.

IMO the best options are in the land-grant colleges and similar institutions. They have long had the mission and the infrastructure needed to take in large numbers of students from diverse backgrounds and they have first-class research capabilities in practical sciences – the kinds of things you need to build a country.   

We were also mightily impressed by the community colleges we visited. They have the capacity to train large numbers in English and study habits. I believe that my Brazilians friends experienced a minor epiphany when the toured community colleges (our group visited Northern Virginia Community College and Montgomery College) and I did too, BTW. Before this visit They were not much interested in sending their students to community colleges, which they saw in the old paradigm as second-class or junior colleges. We were surprised by their connections with local firms and flexibility in responding to their training & research needs. Something along the lines of the American community college paradigm will be a key ingredient in Brazil’s development, especially in the integration of the new middle class into prosperity. Brazil has excellent universities to train the best-and-brightest. What they need is that bridge.

I was less enamored by the receptions we got at our elite universities. Maybe they are less hungry because they already have much more demand for places in their universities than they can possibly satisfy and maybe they think they have enough international connections, but the difference was palpable. We got enthusiastic receptions at the excellent middle ranked universities and community colleges; the elite universities were polite but we tended to get one or two officials explaining that it was hard to get in. This is no real problem. As I wrote above, there are more opportunities than our Brazilian friends can exploit. 

I believe, and told my Brazilian friends, that rankings are overrated. As a practical proposition, you can get as great an education at a big state school as you can at the elite institution. They understand this and are sophisticated enough to look to programs and department, not to the big name. If you want to study water resources, you are a lot better off at the University of Nebraska than at Harvard, for example.

So I think this trip succeeded in fulfilling all the expectations. The Science w/o Borders initiative will succeed and we helped.  

My pictures are from the recently completed trip. Most people will recognize the picture up top as the Chrysler building in New York with its art deco crown.  The middle picture is the quad at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The bottom is the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.  It was our first public university.

One of the things about American universities that most impresses our Brazilians friends is the density and depth of outside connections. Most American universities work in a web of other universities, private firms and NGOs to a much greater extent than their Brazilian counterparts. Students at American universities often work as interns and in co-ops with businesses. Researchers at American universities mix freely with outsider.  American professors consult. Universities are not outside; they are fully part of society’s fabric. (This may seem obvious to us, but recall that many universities traditionally have seen themselves as separate with separate norms and sometimes special rules and laws. In Europe, they were based on religious institutions with traditions of separation.)

In trying to explain this difference, one of our Brazilian friends credited relative insecurity among American academics.  He said that Brazilian academics are relatively well paid and secure in their positions.  They are not hungry for other things. They don’t need to look for outside opportunities. Only hungry wolves hunt.   American academics are hungry, at least in the figurative case.

This makes a lot of sense.  I am not sure the hunger metaphor is perfect, but I do think that American universities have a feeling of incompleteness. They need to partner with outsiders.  This makes the universities better and more robust as well as more useful to society.

This is not an uncontroversial idea. When I was in school lo those many years ago, there was a lot of gnashing of teeth that academics were getting involved with private business. There was a kind of chastity idea that universities should start apart from the hustle, bustle and especially the profit motives of the larger society.  This has weakened in recent decades.   Describing academics in an “ivory tower” – separate from society – is usually a pejorative description.  But we still see some of this idea.  There really is not much merit to the idea of separateness it, although it is resembles the valid idea that scholars should have some space for contemplation.  

The value of a scholarly pursuit is that it should allow the thinking person the space to think. You can be so involved in doing things that you don’t have time to think about what you are doing or why. This we should defend.  But a step back or a pause to think should not mean separation.

The irony for a scholar being separate is that separating yourself allows you to do exactly what scholarship should never do, i.e. isolating yourself from people and ideas that might challenge your own ideas.  We all look for confirming information and people who support us. We need to be pushed out of this comfort zone usually by needing to interact with people who might prefer to avoid.  

That is why it is good to be hungry, at least sometimes. It forces us to get out there, try new things, innovate and overcome.  Challenges lead to growth; comfort to stagnation.

My pictures are Ben Franklin at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a man who questioned, tried lots of new things and produced practical wisdom. He founded the University of Pennsylvania, an academic pursuit, but he also invented the Franklin stove, very practical, discovered the nature of electricity, very technical, originated lighting rods, very helpful and described the Gulf Stream, very much natural science. And he did almost everything he did in cooperation with others. He in his person formed a good template for what universities might be.  I also have a picture of a walking street at the University of Pennsylvania.