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Renée Zicman, Executive Director, FAUBAI

RZ: Other than some Latin American students we don’t have a huge number of international students coming to Brazil for a full degree. Most of them come to Brazil for exchange programmes, bilateral or inter-institutional exchanges. And most of them are European because our European partners have been the most important in Brazil especially Germany, France and the UK.

Brazil has been doing a great job improving the internationalisation process in this part of the world

The PIE: How is the relationship between FAUBAI and the government?

RZ: In June the Brazilian government launched the national plan for education and for the first time internationalisation was included as one of the national priorities. I would say FAUBAI has played an increasingly important role and has an open dialogue with representatives from the Brazilian government – the Minister of Education, Minister of Science, Technology and Development and the Minister of External Affairs – those three we work very closely with.

“Our European partners have been the most important in Brazil especially Germany, France and the UK”

The PIE: Will the elections bring about any change in policy?

RZ: Whoever wins I don’t think we’ll see any great changes in terms of international higher education. I think from now on it’s mandatory. There’s no way to come back from where we’ve gone. President Dilma has just announced Science without Borders will continue through another 100,000 scholarships and I think it will continue even if she’s not reelected.

The PIE: What challenges do you foresee?

RZ: Foreign language acquisition. Even offering courses in English and providing foreign language programmes for our domestic students. For the first phase of the Science without Borders programme, the Brazilian government launched a programme for English training called English without Borders. And now the programme has changed to Languages without Borders. It’s an online course and we had more than 600,000 registrations. This is a challenge.

“The best way for Latin America in this field of international education is to do our homework better in terms of promoting and presenting ourselves”

Also, long-term partnerships because we have to use all those student mobility activities to build long-term and sustainable partnerships. Student mobility is a priority, but it has to go beyond that. We have to have more collaborative partnerships, not just sending students one way but finding better ways to do collaboration, especially in research.

The PIE: Will Latin America ever have its time in the sun?

RZ: It’s completely different. We can’t compare with Asia and especially China. The best way for Latin America in this field of international education is to do our homework better in terms of promoting and presenting ourselves. To make better known the quality of our higher education, the quality of research our universities have been doing, and in some significant subjects that you can’t find outside of this region.

Brazil is the seventh economy in the world, the second agricultural exporter, the third computer market, the fourth country for attracting international investors. We have a lot of opportunities in this country so we need to know the best ways of promoting them to international students and international collaborators.

We also have to open ourselves to other regions and countries, we’re very Euro- and North America-centric sometimes.

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