World Class Worldwide: Transforming Research Universities in Asia and Latin America

8 Brazilian Research Universities

8 Brazilian Research Universities João E. Steiner Research and graduate education universities constitute the top of the education system pyramid. Most countries with a high degree of economic and social development have robust and diversified educational systems. In the age of the “knowledge society,” no country can do without a significant sector of research-oriented institutions. Experts say that biological diversity is the basis of wealth—a sort of fundamental law of evolution. With regard to educational institutions, could institutional diversity equally represent a source of wealth? The case of the United States, which boasts of having the planet’s most diversified and successful system, seems to corroborate this prospect. Individual and institutional potentialities flourish whenever there is diversity and freedom of organization. In most developed and developing countries, the system of higher learning is complex and diverse. In Brazil, the system’s institutional diversity expanded in the 1990s and now performs a plurality of functions in academic and professional development (Martins 2000). Legally speaking, the system comprises universities, university centers, and affiliated colleges and schools—public, private nonprofit (community, religious , foundation-sponsored, etc.), or private for-profit. Not all universities are research universities, and not all research universities are involved in research with the same intensity (Lobo 2004). How, then, does one best characterize systemic diversity? Assessments and evaluations are an essential part of academic activity. The evaluation of students is a universal practice. Although institutional evaluation is less common, a robust educational system must be transparent to its users and to society. With regard to graduate education in Brazil, the Ministry of Education’s CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento do Ensino Superior [Office for the Improvement of Higher Learning])1 has been doing some strategic work to evaluate programs over the years. ORIGINS Higher learning in Brazil was created in the early 19th century. After D. João VI, the Portuguese king, fled from Europe to Brazil in 1808, the country’s first medical programs were established—one in Salvador and two in Rio de Janeiro. In 1810, the Royal Military Academy was founded (currently the School of Engineering of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). The law schools of São Paulo (in the city’s downtown São Francisco square) and Olinda (in the state of Pernambuco) were established in 1827. In the final years of the Second Empire (1840–1889) and in the early Republican era (1889–1900), several professional schools were created, encompassing the fields of medicine, engineering, agriculture, and law. During the early 20th century the creation of professional schools was accelerated. Soon, some of these schools merged, forming the first universities : the Federal University of Paraná in 1912, the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in 1924, and the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in 1927. However, these schools all focused on disseminating culture or providing professional training; entirely absent was the concept of teaching-related research, which at the time was already common in the Humboldtian universities of Europe and the United States, where teaching, learning, and research were closely associated. Brazilian politics was then dominated by conservative agrarian oligarchies, a state of affairs known as Café com Leite2 politics. The 1930 revolution swept Getúlio Vargas into power, broke up the Café com Leite regime, and led to the appointment of the first minister of education and health, Francisco Campos, who carried out conservative reforms in the country’s higher learning system patterned after the already outmoded pre-Humboldtian universities. By the late 1950s, Brazil had nine federal, two state, and eight religious universities. In the 1960s there were two surges in the creation of universities —institutions that are now research universities—during a troubled time in Brazilian politics. The first phase occurred between 1960 and 1962—a period of regime changes and an intensification of student unrest goaded by the so-called crisis of the surplus students.3 The second surge took place during the university reforms of 1968, coinciding with the rise of international student movements and a toughening up of the military government in Brazil. 174 João E. Steiner After this second spurt, the ability of the federal government to create other universities withered. Corporate-like universities began to appear in the early 1970s, a situation that continued until the end of the military regime. In 1985, when the country was redemocratized, private universities began to appear in...