Number of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in Brazil, according to Inep (2020): 2,608 – 2,306 of which are private and account for 75,8% of enrollments in undergraduate programs.
About internationalization
Survey carried out by Capes (2017) with every HEI that feature graduate programs assesses by the agency with a score between 3 and 7 in Brazil showed that:
Out of the 320 that replied (which correspond to 75% of the total recipients of the survey), 70.3% described their internationalization process as weak or moderate, and only eight institutions described it as intense.
For 71% of those that replied, their graduate program structure does not include an international office
Among those with a small or moderate internationalization process, 52.5% still do not feature an internationalization plan, and 65% of them state they would require external consulting support to elaborate a plan.
Among those with an intense internationalization process, 62% claim to feature an internationalization plan, while 38% state they would require external consultancy for its creation and implementation.
About student mobility
Data from Unesco (2021) regarding the mobility of Brazilian students abroad show that this is a differential career strategy for students from medium-high and high economic socioeconomic status.
In the country, the mobility rate is of only 1.2% of the total of students in academic mobility around the world, a low percentage when comparing internationally.
According to OECD (2019), only 3% of Latin American students have access to academic mobility opportunities abroad.
The international students that come to Brazil for academic mobility represent 0.4% of the total of the world’s students in academic mobility, a total of 21,181 students.
In 2014, according to Capes, most foreign graduate students in Brazil came from developing countries — Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Cuba and Mozambique —, and 65% of them were male.
Strategic programs from the Brazilian government to promote internationalization
Brazil-Australia cooperation in internationalization and research
Between 2011 and 2017, the Science without Borders program supported the studies of approximately 100 thousand students abroad, Australia being the fifth most popular destination.
In 2001, according to the database Scopus, only 97 collaborative scientific papers had been published by Brazilian and Australian researchers; in 2020, this number reached 2,423, increasing around 25 times. This pointed to a mutual “discovery” between researchers from these countries during the period.
The fields of Medicine, Physics and Astronomy, Agriculture and Biological Sciences, Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology represent over 50% of joint publications between both countries.