Category: Brazil

Brazilian Federal institutes of science and technology are in some ways like American community colleges, in other ways have a mission similar to American land grant colleges and in many ways are completely Brazilian.  They are already part of the Science w/o Borders program and a potentially a source of great partners in English teaching, science and community college exchanges. 

In Portuguese they are called Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia (IFECT).  The network was an initiative of former president Lula, established in 2008. At that time there were thirty-eight. There are now 354 and the goal is to add another 208 by the end of Dilma’s term. Rapid expansion was possible because most of the “new” institutions are former technical schools put into the new program.    

The network reflects the schools on which it was based and the quality of schools is inconsistent.  But they are ubiquitous and share a few characteristics. All are funded by the Federal government, they are present in all the states plus the Federal district and they are all tuition free.  The goal in creating the network of IFECTs was to make education and technical training more easily accessible to underserved populations and to help create a workforce adapted to the needs of modern Brazil.   

Like an American community college, course offering vary depending on the perceived need of the location.  In a place like rural Goiás there would be courses in plant biology or animal husbandry that you might not find in central São Paulo. Enrollment is mostly open, but particular courses might require special qualifications and/or limit enrollment to those most suited to the study or most in need.  IFECTs resemble American land grant colleges in their mission to develop useful arts and sciences and work within the needs of the community.  Ideally, the IFECTs will bridge the gap between academic research and practical applications, as with the land grant universities original mission, making the whole state their laboratory and classroom.  

A related program is O Programa Nacional de Acesso ao Ensino Técnico e Emprego (Pronatec), signed into law by President Dilma in October 2011. This will work through the IFECTs – but also in cooperation with SENAI and SENAC, to bring mostly technical education to underserved Brazilians. The goal is to enroll 8 million Brazilian by 2014. They also are implementing distance learning courses. They currently offer more than 400 courses. 

For courses not offered in public systems, qualified students can get to help to pay for private options, Fundo de Financiamento Estudantil (FIES) which gives students loans at subsidized interest rates below inflation, i.e. negative real rates.  The loans can be used to pay for studies at private institutions approved by MEC or those tied to Sistemas Nacionais de Aprendizagem (the “S” system: SENAC, SESC, SENAI, SESI, SENAT, SEST) .  There is also a scholarship program called Bolsa-Formação, with a strong emphasis on helping students who would not otherwise be able to attend training and a special program to encourage women called Mulheres Mil. 

 An inclusive and well-funded system like this may help Brazil achieve its workforce goals.  I have worked with IFECTs on several occasions but not yet visited one; they are now on my list of must see places.

This entry is a little out of order – We are in Salvador to meet American students from Houston Community College. They came to Brazil to work with Brazilian partners. The connection is bigger and more promising than I thought.   U.S. –Brazil Connect, which I mentioned on earlier occasions, established a working relationship with SESI in Salvador, Bahia.  The first act in this new friendship was to send 20 students from the respective community colleges to SESI in Salvador to coach English. I use the word coach instead of teach because these are not English teachers per se, but rather coaches to a small group of Brazilians. 

Each American had a group of ten Brazilians. They made contact via Facebook before coming to Brazil, so they were cyber buddies before meeting in person. IMO, this is a superb use of the electronic- human relationship.  They were able to make many of the preliminary introductions and exchange online, but then the cemented the cyber relationship with actual human contact.

The Americans spent four weeks in Salvador. I attended the closing ceremony and it was clear that the groups had bonded. Several of the kids told me that this was the best experience of their lives. We can discount a little because of youthful enthusiasm, but they were clearly moved. Other comments were about meeting Americans and changing their points of view. They all hope to remain in touch and with the wonders of Internet this may be more than an empty aspiration. This truly is the kind of people-to-people exchanges we want to make happen. 

We can facilitate these exchanges and they are getting bigger. While at the meetings at SESI Salvador, I met representatives from SESIs in Minas Gerais, Santa Catarina & Rio de Janeiro, who have agreed to expand the program to their states.  Pernambuco and Alagoas are also in. This will expand the number of participating states to six, which will mean 120 Americans will be coaching 1200 Brazilians. This is something big.  

The Fulbright meeting was held at the Centro Nacional de Pesquisa em Engergia e Materiais (CNPEM) and one of the collateral benefits was that we got a tour of the place. The center is located in several buildings on a big campus with lots of green space. On the campus are included o Laboratório Nacional de Luz Síncrotron (LNLS), o Laboratório Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia do Bioetanol (CTBE) e o Laboratório Nacional de Biociências. 

Most of the budget comes from the Federal government with about 15% coming from private firms.  Academic researchers can use the facilities, but they bring their own equipment. The analogy is that the Federal government pays for the car and the users put in their own gas. I saw all kinds of research going on in biotechnology and biofuels. Foreign researchers are welcome and many come from other parts of Latin America. There are fewer visiting researchers from other parts of the world, but our Brazilian friends are hopeful.

I have to admit that I don’t really know what I am looking at. I see lots of bottles and machines. They tell me that they are crystallizing proteins. I believe that is true, although I am not sure what that means. I did see a fish that glows in the dark. That was cool. It has to do with its trans-genetic nature. At least that is what they told me.

Another big and impressive thing is the Synchrotron.  I took a picture. This was the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.  It is a type of particle accelerator. They told me that it had a wide range of uses in research. I can appreciate that it is a good thing. There is a TV series I sometimes watch called “the Big Bang Theory”. Visiting this place and talking to the people there reminded me of that show.

We held our alumni event at the Dan Hotel, which was convenient and not very expensive.  Only three of the six invitees could actually make it, but it was good to talk to people who had been affected by our programs.  They almost all say the same thing.  They almost always tell me that their program was a life-changing experience and this makes them friends forever of the U.S.

I met the guy who went on a Community College Initiative exchange in 2009.  He spoke to me in fluent English, which he attributed to his time in the U.S.  The Community College Initiative is an ECA program that sends participants to study in fields like agriculture, applied engineering, business management and administration, allied health care, information technology, media, and tourism and hospitality management. Fulbright administers the program in Brazil and participants are recruited from historically underserved populations.  Ronaldo studied information science.   He said that is still maintaining friendships he made in the U.S., but also worldwide with other participants he met in the U.S.  In this world of networks, I wonder what role our program participants play.   

As I was talking to Ronaldo, I have to admit that my mind wandered to how we measure success in public affairs. It was not because he was uninteresting. On the contrary, it was exactly his enthusiasm that led me to this related related topic. Here was an articulate and promising young man who was my immediate friend because he was a friend of the United States. We helped him become successful and put him into an international network.  He told me that much of what he becomes will be thanks to us. I don’t know if all of that is true, but some is. How will we measure this? How will we measure the thousands of contacts he might make and deeply influence? We are too stuck on numbers and metrics, which usually measure superficial “reach”. Is reaching 100,000 people with a 140 character message on twitter worth more or less than this one kid?

I also thought about the Pygmalion effect.  That is the idea that you create success by your idea that the person is or will be successful.  Do we find successful people or do we help create them?  Some of both are at work in a complex interaction.  It was fortuitous that in walked another of our guests, a psychologist who had been on an exchange program in 2009.  One of Ricardo’s specialties was how to measure the interaction between training and selection.  We talked about a study of applicants to Ivy League universities that compared those who were accepted and actually attended them to those who were accepted but did not enroll.  After several years, their outcomes were very similar. To a large extend, a great university like Harvard produces great results because it is able to start with great raw material.  Returning to the Community College paradigm, perhaps the Community Colleges actually produce a greater value added. They take kids who otherwise might not be successful and make them better.  Of course, the other permutation is how hard it to add value.  The better you get, the harder it is to make each additional percentage point of improvement.  The discussion will never be resolved.   

The last guy to show up was a recent IVLP.  Luiz studied alternative power in the U.S. and is working to apply what he learned in Brazil.   Like all the others, Luiz praised the connections he made in the U.S.  This is a persistent theme.  The program might last a month or year, but the contacts are forever.  My thoughts returned to measuring results.  The measuring paradigm, IMO, is inadequate.  We are using a physical-mechanical model to measure what works more like a biological system. Let me explain.   

In a physical-mechanical system, you can measure and predict results from inputs.  It may be very complicated, but it is not very complex.   For example, a mechanical watch is complicated, but not complex.  It won’t change its mind and it won’t reach to changes around it, except maybe to break.  A watch will not grow any bigger or get any smaller if you change its environment. In contrast, a biological system is complex, with various parts changing based on changes in other parts of the system.  A little seed can grow into an enormous tree and in the course of its grow will affect everything around it.

My three friends hold potential for growth much beyond the inputs and outputs that we can measure.  Their actions will affect the ideas of others in ways that we cannot predict. Maybe my belief in the efficacy of public affairs is faith based.  I have faith that good programs will produce good results in ways that I cannot explain, much as I have faith that good seeds will produce good plants and fruit in ways I also cannot explain.   My judgment tells me that we did a good job with these exchanges and I have faith that taking time to meet with them in the evening in Campinas was worth the time. 

I flew Azul to Campinas.  There are lots of flights there because Campinas is the hub for Azul Airlines.  I could catch a 5:58 am flight and avoid the trouble and expense of an additional night in Campinas, while still having the whole workday on Thursday.  By the logic of travel time and maybe even expense, Campinas is often closer to Brasília than it is to São Paulo.  You can fly to the Campinas airport of Viracopos in a little over an hour at the cost of less than $100 if you plan ahead and get a promotional ticket.  Driving from São Paulo in the usual traffic will take longer and cost you more if you have to hire a car. The trip to the airport from my house in Brasília takes only fifteen minutes and the taxi cost just $15.  I think my colleague in São Paulo had to wake up earlier to meet me.  It makes you reconsider the concept of distance. The real measure of distance should be the time, money and discomfort required to arrive. 

That is why distance is something that can change, something we can change and adapt.  When a new road opens or a new airline connects, distance changes in a practical sense.  Brazil is a big country.  Measured in square miles, it is about the size of the U.S.; measured in practical distance, it is much larger.  It takes longer and costs more to move yourself of your stuff from one point to another.  Because of our great freight rail and generally good system of highways, right down to county truck roads that bring are paved with asphalt right to gates of most farms, our products move relatively efficiently.  We don’t appreciate that because it is largely unseen and we take it for granted.   We can also move around our country easily by air and road. Although we often complain about these things, we are very well served.  Brazil needs to build infrastructure, especially freight rail and improved water transport.   This is what is really holding back complete development and has been a problem since the beginning.  When you solve infrastructure problems, most other things fall into place and until you do all you have is growth in fits and starts.  The only real way to increase prosperity is to increase productivity.  Good infrastructure does that. 

In effect, Azul has moved Brasília closer to Campinas, just as the overcrowded highways around São Paulo has moved it farther from São Paulo.  Of course, you have to take into account the time you have to hang around in airports.  All the various security checks have added many hundreds of miles of virtual distance to most trips. It would be interesting to see a distance/time/trouble map with the relationships among places. 

Azul in Brazil was founded in 2008 by David Neeleman, the same guy who founded JetBlue in the U.S.  By a quirk of fortune, he was born in São Paulo and is a citizen of Brazil as well as of the United States.  Azul has a fairly efficient system with low cost flights, using Campinas as a hub.  There are two things I didn’t like.  One was that you have to leave from Terminal 2 in Brasília.  This is much less comfortable than the main terminal.  They also use planes that have very little overhead space.  I travel very light, but not everybody else does and it was hard to find space for my backpack.    

The picture above is self-explanatory. It is another step on the road to declaring everything a disability.  I am not sure I would like this if I was a fat person. Look at that symbol. It kind of resembles a fat person, but it certainly is not flattering.  This is the first time I have seen an extra-wide seat.

I had fun talking to these Brazilian English teachers featured in the photo above. They were taking part in a workshop at the Campinas BNC. They said that they don’t get many opportunities to talk with real native speakers. As a poor speaker of several languages not my own, I sympathized when they said that it was easier to understand each other than a native speaker. Learners of English as a second language are more careful than native English speakers and Brazilians can appreciate the accents of their fellows. These teachers were in Campinas for training partially supported by one of our grants. One of my jobs is to evaluate grants. This one is working. 

I asked them why they wanted to learn & teach English. They all answered in similar ways, saying that it opened the world for them.  One man mentioned his trip to Istanbul, where English was his key to communicating with the Turks. They were all enthusiastic about the program. 

Actually, I think I should revise that statement about “language not my own” that I made above. My “other” languages are really more mine, since I had to buy them with a lot more hard work. I recall an old news clip of John Wayne talking to a hostile group of hippies during the 1960s.  One of the kids asked derisively if John Wayne had his own hair. Wayne, who was bald, tipped his toupee and said, “it better be mine; I paid for it.”  As a former classical scholar, I also recall the line quoted in “I Claudius” that I learned in 9th grade Latin class – The golden hair that Gala wears is hers/Who would have thought it?/She swears it’s hers, and true she swears/For I know where she bought it! I wish I had such a good memory for things that were useful.

 The BNC in Campinas has around 1800 students. They are rebuilding from a low of 1400 a couple of years ago.  The BNC is the gold standard of English teaching. It supplies a more complete cultural experience than its rivals, but the rivals promise faster results. BNC leaders also say they lost lots of customers when former President Lula said or implied that English wasn’t very important. I don’t know much about this incident, but it seems to have been memorable to English teachers. 

I was surprised to find that English was not more common in Campinas. But I understood that it is not as much an international center as I thought it was. After all, UNICAMP is a major university and there is the research lab and PUC Campinas.  The presence of these made me expect more English. The particular thing that brought the problem to my attention was the local failure of our “English cubed” program.  

In cooperation with the Coligação of BNCs, we created a program to bring Brazilian science students up to the level needed to study in the U.S. in the Science w/o Borders program. The BNC in Campinas was one of the institutions given scholarships to execute the program. They had to give back the money (which was redeployed to other centers) because they couldn’t find ten kids with the necessary proficiency that were also qualified and interested in the Science w/o Borders program.  I am glad that the BNC leaders were honest and self aware enough to make the right decision.

If I can digress a bit, I have been coming up again and again against problems of scalability and absorption capacity. We have so many opportunities in Brazil, or at least it looks that way. But we seem to be scaling up faster than the system will bear. This includes our own staff, which has remained the same size with higher workloads, but also with our “customers.” This problem is exacerbated by our laudable (I think) desire to reach into previously under served communities. It is almost a tautology. Those who have been “under served” are generally under prepared and we (the U.S. Mission) do not have the resources to change this, at least over the short term.

Our biggest bottleneck is English capacity. Participation in our programs often requires reasonable English proficiency. It takes years to learn English and it requires a commitment of time and resources. I mistakenly presumed that there was a much larger pool of high intermediate and advanced English speakers.  

But it makes sense if you think in terms of conditional probabilities. Think about the potential Science w/o Borders applicants. Start with proficient English speakers, not including those who have already signed up for Science w/o Borders with sufficient English scores. Now subtract all those not currently enrolled in college, minus those in their first or their last years. Next subtract all those who are not studying sciences. Among those left, we now have to count only those who want study outside Brazil and then move to the even smaller group who choose to study in the U.S.  and want to do it this year. Suddenly, the massive numbers are not so massive. All this means that the potential customer base in Brazil is not very big and the customer base in any particular city might be too small to support the program. I have to think about ways to expand the market or find other avenues.

Campinas is a big city that still retains some of the small town feel and traffic patterns. I got there early in the morning, having taken the Azul flight from Brasília that left at 5:56, in time to for the morning rush hour.  There was a lot of traffic on the road, but it never stalled.  Somebody told me that the traffic would often be worse, but was lighter during the school holiday month. I suppose that is true, but traffic in São Paulo or Rio is heavy even during the off months. 

We stayed at the Dan Inn. It was simple but acceptable and not very expensive.  Around the downtown you can easily walk.  There are lots of restaurants that were not yet open in the morning.  Marcos from São Paulo and I stopped at Starbucks. I don’t know if Starbucks is a sign of higher civilization or not, especially in town that made its first fortune on coffee growing and trading, but it is familiar.  It is exactly the same as Starbucks in the U.S., except most things are in Portuguese.  Not everything; they still do not have a small cup of coffee and the small coffee is called a “tall” just like it is in the U.S.  I didn’t have any small change and when I tried to pay with a “grande” $R 50 bill, the barista asked if I had anything smaller.  I told her that didn’t have any “tall” bills. She didn’t get the joke, which maybe wasn’t very good, so I paid with my credit card.  This works best in any case. 

Our first appointment was at UNICAMP, the university in Campinas.  UNICAMP is one of the best universities in Brazil and one of the premier research institutions.   It was founded in 1966 and concentrates on the sciences, with especially good results in genomics and nanotech.  It is responsible for 15% of the Brazilian research output and more than half its students are at the graduate level.  UNICAMP is rated as the second best university in Latin America. 

Brazil has a Federal university system and there are private universities.  Some Brazilian states have state universities. It is supported by the State of São Paulo, as are USP and UNESP).  The State of São Paulo earmarks 2.1958% of the sales taxes it collects for the support of its universities and there are a lot of sales in São Paulo.  UNICAMP gets about $1billion in state funds and raises around $350million from private firms.  These are mostly in the form of joint research funds.  

There is no tuition, but it is really hard to get in.  Each year they accept about 3400 students out of 600,000 applicants. The University has approximately 17000 undergraduate and 20000 graduate students. There are nearly 1,800 faculty members, 98% with a Ph.D. The university makes no distinction between in-state and out-of-state applicants, but Brazil doesn’t have the kind of tradition of kids going away to college, so most of the students are from São Paulo.  Besides the university itself, UNICAMP runs two large hospitals in Campinas, and one in each of the neighboring towns of Sumaré and Hortolândia.

UNICAMP has very few foreign students. The largest number comes from Columbia and there are only 161 of them.   Only nine (9) Americans are enrolled as full time students at UNICAMP, although there are some shorter exchange programs and the university has an increasing number of international connections.   

The university is located in a charming area of Campinas called Barão Geraldo. It is a semi-rural place with lots of greenery.  I had breakfast at a restaurant/bakery called Romana, pictured above. The whole area reminded me of Italy. It seems to have a high quality of life and it would be a nice place to live.

I spoke to a senior analyst at the Camara dos Deputados Office of Legislative Counsel. He is a former IVLP and subsequently did graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, so he knows something both about Brazil and the U.S. His organization is much like a CRS, but maybe a bit more hand on in helping with the drafting of legislation. It does general studies of important subjects, as well as supports the legislators with specific research. We talked about the Brazilian government and how it is similar and different from ours.

The many similarities to the U.S. system is not an accident. The new Brazilian republic used the U.S. as a model. Rui Barbosa, the chief architect of the Constitution of 1891 (Brazil’s first republican constitution), looked toward the U.S., specifically rejecting French style constitutional thinking then lingering in South America. Brazil was once called the United States of Brazil. We see many familiar forms. Brazil has a President elected to a four year term by popular vote. There is nothing like our Electoral College. There is a Senate (Brazilian senators are elected to eight year terms with three from each of the 26 states and three from the Federal District for a total of 81), a House of Representatives (513 deputies, who are elected by proportional representation to serve four-year terms) and a Supreme Court (eleven members appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate). Like the U.S., Brazil is a federation of states, although the states do not have all the same sovereign rights as those in the U.S. An important difference in origin is that in the U.S. the states created the Federal government while in Brazil the Federal government created the states.

The Brazilian system gives more power to the president than ours does. The executive originates the budget. The congress authorizes spending, but in practice does not resist presidential initiatives. The president also has significant power to issue what we would call executive orders. These have the power of law unless the congress negates them within two months. More and more laws are being promulgated in this way. The president also has significant power to move resources. This makes congress more dependent on presidential favor.

You can tell where power concentrates by the number of deputies and senators who leave the congress to run for local office. Rather than working up toward the Federal level, many politicians look at the job in congress as a stepping stone to becoming a mayor or governor in their home states. I don’t recall this happening often in the U.S.

Osmar also told me that the courts are moving in the unexpected direction of essentially making law by means of their decisions. This happens in the U.S., but it is more surprising in Brazil, which is a primarily a code law country w/o our strong common law traditions of precedents.

Of course, Brazil and the U.S. are different in many ways, given the differences in our history and cultures, but having in common being very large countries with lots of diversity tends to pull us in many of the same directions. Both the U.S. and Brazil are countries of aspiration, i.e. people can a long way away and still remain in the same country. This means that they can aspire to better their lives by moving to follow opportunities. We talked about changes in the last twenty-five years with migration of people from Rio Grande do Sul and Parana as a kind of case study. These people followed the agricultural frontier, trading relatively small holdings in their home states for much bigger places in states like Mato Grosso, Rondonia or Pará. Cities such as Santarém in Pará are heavily Gaucho and the prospering farms in western Bahia are often owned by former residents of the South. They brought their skills and habits with them, but also quickly blended in with Brazilians already there. In our country you might see this kind of pattern with Californians moving to other states of the west. I remember people in eastern Washington State complaining that they were being “Californicated.” I would not want to take the parallel too far, but it does exist.

Anyway, I despair of really getting to know Brazil.  It is way too big and complex and by the time I learn something, it is likely to have changed.  When I talk to Brazilians about comparisons of my country with theirs, I often realize how much about my own country I just don’t know. I suppose I should just enjoy the quest of trying to find out.