Science without Borders did not reach its objective, according to a study – 05/18/2023 – Education

A doctoral research carried out at FGV (Fundação Getulio Vargas) and published by the World Institute for Research in Development Economics at the United Nations University (UNU-Wider, in English) indicates that the Science without Borders program did not reach its objectives among students of 13 federal universities.

Created in 2011, during the Dilma Rousseff (PT) administration, and closed in 2017, the CsF granted more than 90,000 scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students to study abroad and had an estimated cost of BRL 13.2 billion.

In the group of institutions analyzed, the probability of entering Brazilian postgraduate programs in the first three years after the exchange was 12.5% ​​lower and, between four and six years, 7.1% lower than among those who did not pass the exchange. initiative, created in 2011 during the Dilma Rousseff (PT) administration.

The researchers also found that the initiative had no effect on the likelihood of having a formal job or being a business owner or partner.

When asked, the CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) and Capes (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel), funders of the initiative, stated that the study has limitations and it is not possible to assess the impact of the program based solely on it. .

How was the research carried out?

The research began to be outlined in 2018, when Otavio Canozzi Conceição entered the doctorate in economics at FGV. He had already studied CsF during his master’s degree at PUCRS (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul) and continued analyzing the program, this time under the guidance of André Portela Souza.

Through the Law on Access to Information, the researchers requested from the 63 federal universities the data of the undergraduate students who enrolled in the exchange program, including both those approved for the trips and those not selected. They requested: full name of the student, gender, age, race, six middle digits of the CPF, campus, year and semester of admission and grade in the entrance exam.

“The requests were concentrated in the federal universities because they correspond to 26 of the 30 universities with the greatest number of candidates in the graduation-sandwich modality”, says Souza.

In addition, explains the advisor, there is an electronic and unified government system that allows requesting data from all federal universities in the country. In the case of state universities, there would be a need to apply in different systems, which would increase data collection time and could compromise the doctoral schedule, according to Souza.

Of the 63 federations, 13 provided data: UFBA (Bahia), UFS (Sergipe), UFV (Viçosa, MG), UFMT (Mato Grosso), UFCG (Campina Grande, PB), UFSCar (São Carlos, SP), UFPA (Pará ), UFSC (Santa Catarina), UFPB (Paraíba), UFRA (Rural Amazon), UFGD (Grande Dourados, MS), UFPE (Pernambuco) and Ufes (Espírito Santo). “Our database corresponds to 13.6% of the total number of students who enrolled in the sandwich graduation modality and 13% of those benefited by the policy”, says the professor.

The second step was to cross-reference the responses with government databases. They checked the presence of students in the Rais (Annual List of Social Information), which lists all workers with formal registration; on the Sucupira Platform, which gathers information on graduate programs; and in company registrations with the Federal Revenue Service.

Finally, a comparison was made between students who received a CsF scholarship and those from the same universities and courses who applied, but were not approved.

What do the researchers say?

One of the hypotheses for the negative result in this group of students is the delay in entering the labor market. With the exchange, internships and graduation were postponed, which may have had an impact on employability.

The goal of sending 100,000 students abroad in just four years and the focus on undergraduate students, contrary to what other countries do to expand their knowledge in priority areas, may also have weighed negatively.

“However, we do not know the impact among students from other universities. Furthermore, there are other dimensions that we were unable to assess in this study. For example, gains in terms of culture and socio-emotional skills”, observes the professor.

For Souza, the lesson is that you shouldn’t create a large-scale program all at once. “Building pilots, experimenting, starting on a smaller scale, learning from the process and adjusting as it expands seems to be a more sensible path”, he argues.

He suggests that measures such as creating a mentorship, improving the use of disciplines studied abroad and selecting international universities of certified quality would be relevant measures in a new program.

What do CNPq and Capes say?

For the current president of CNPq, Ricardo Galvão, Science Without Borders was a great innovation in the Brazilian policy of encouraging the internationalization of higher education, despite possible problems.

Galvão praises the way the researchers obtained, organized and analyzed the data, but questions the representativeness of the sample to evaluate the program as a whole.

He also argues that a previous study concluded that there was a positive impact of scholarship holders on postgraduate studies and that it would be relevant, in evaluating the performance of the SwB, to also consider other modalities, such as postdoctoral studies.

“Certainly, this does not mean that there have not been failures in the implementation, execution, monitoring and evaluation of the CsF program, which justify further studies for future improvements, in case a similar program is reimplanted”, he ponders.

Capes has a similar opinion. The entity praises the public policy evaluation effort and the information contained in the study, but argues that its broader conclusions about the program and its effectiveness need to be considered in conjunction with other research and approaches.

According to the study advisor, there is the intention to expand the research to a larger base. “We make ourselves available to CNPq and the Ministry of Science and Technology to expand the study. They can facilitate obtaining data from the MEC [Ministério da Educação] or directly with other educational institutions.”