![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/menos-doutores-pandemia-ingles-desktop-true.png\")
\n <\/picture>The prospect that the decline will end is supported by two indicators. Doctoral grants awarded by CAPES, which support a third of those enrolled in the country, increased in number during the pandemic. They were at around 44,500 in 2018, dropped to 43,000 in 2019, but reached their highest level in 2020, with 46,000 students receiving grants. The overall number of doctoral students also grew, hitting 146,600 in 2020. In both cases, performance is influenced by deadline extensions and student retention.<\/p>\n
Other universities are gathering evidence that the crisis may have structural causes that go beyond the disruption caused by Covid-19. Since 2014, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) has trained around 1,500 master’s and 1,000 PhDs per year, however, in 2020 and 2021 these numbers dropped by around 35%. But that was not the only negative indicator. Chemist Denise Guimar\u00e3es Freire, Dean of Postgraduate Studies and Research at UFRJ, draws attention to what seems to be reduced interest in this type of education. This is because the number of new students entering master’s courses at UFRJ also decreased, from 4000 in 2018 to 3500 in 2021.<\/p>\n
Freire attributes the change to a set of factors. One of the principal reasons could be the inflationary erosion in amounts given for grants awarded by the federal agencies CAPES and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). Currently, a master’s scholarship recipient receives R$1,500 per month and a doctoral student receives R$2,200. The scholarship amounts were last readjusted in 2013, while the accumulated inflation since then\u2014as measured by the IGP-M (Brazilian market price index)\u2014has reached 117%. \u201cIn the past, many young people finished their undergraduate studies and chose to do a postgraduate course and enter the market later, under more favorable conditions. With the grants from federal agencies so depreciated, that strategy became unfeasible,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n
She also sees a reversal of expectations regarding teaching careers in universities, which is the main destination for PhD graduates. According to data from the Center for Management and Strategic Studies (CGEE), two out of three PhDs employed in 2017 worked in the higher education sector. \u201cThere is a growing perception that being a researcher is no longer worth it, as opportunities have become scarce and funding is lacking. This certainly contributed to scaring off demand from highly qualified candidates,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is dramatic, because 80% of the science produced in Brazil is done with participation from graduate students. Research is largely supported by this workforce, which earns its qualifications while working on projects related to science, technology, and innovation at universities and scientific institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>
![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/028-035_capa_doutores-do-brasil_315-1-desktop-true.png\")
\n <\/picture>Alexandre Affonso<\/span><\/div>At the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), the total number of students enrolled in the master’s and PhD programs grew from 4,400 in the first half of 2020 to 6,600 in the second half of 2021. This was actually a consequence of the drop in dissertations and theses defenses: from 1,759 in 2020 to 1,112 in 2021. According to the Dean of Postgraduate Studies at UFPE, Carol Leandro, these data mask a reduction in demand, especially in engineering and health sciences. \u201cThere is a lack of motivation. Several programs had to carry out two selection processes a year so as not to leave unfilled vacancies, including some that received grades 6 and 7 in the CAPES assessment, which are the highest,\u201d says Leandro, who is a researcher at the Department of Nutrition at UFPE.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething serious is happening,\u201d sums up political scientist Rachel Meneguello, Dean of Graduate Studies at UNICAMP. Her institution also saw declining numbers of master’s and doctoral degrees earned, from 2,155 in 2019 to 1,847 in 2021, in part due to the extension of deadlines granted during the pandemic. Now, in 2022, it also counts 30% less enrollment in its master’s degree programs. Selection processes saw limited demand, possibly indicating reluctance in professionals to enter graduate programs. \u201cIn my program\u2014political science\u2014we used to have an average of 80 candidates every year and this time we had about 40.\u201d Although there is a slight increase in the total number of doctoral students enrolled at the university, Meneguello fears that this is only a result of the backlog of students caused by the pandemic. \u201cThe grants aren’t big enough to sustain dedicating several years to research in a city that’s as expensive to live in as Campinas is.\u201d She believes it will be difficult to reverse the current trend. \u201cEven if the production of knowledge regains its value, it’s unlikely there will be enough resources to correct the large gap created in recent years between the production of necessary human resources and the funding applied to teaching and research.\u201d<\/p>\n
Higher education systems in other countries also suffered from the disruption caused by Covid-19. An annual survey by the National Science Foundation, the primary agency supporting basic science in the United States, showed that the total number of doctoral degrees awarded in the country fell from 55,614 in 2019 to 55,283 in 2020. While it seems like a small drop, this contingent had been growing at an average rate of 3.1% per year since 1957 when the survey began, particularly in the areas of science and engineering, which accounted for 77% of titles granted in 2020, compared to 58% in 1979.<\/p>\n
In Brazil’s case, some signs of crisis were becoming apparent before the pandemic health emergency. A report prepared last year by the former president of CAPES, Ab\u00edlio Baeta Neves, with Concepta McManus, from the University of Bras\u00edlia (UnB), analyzed different aspects of the performance of Brazilian graduate studies programs between 2009 and 2020. They showed that even in a scenario of growth in the number of graduates, between 2016 and 2019 there was a reduction in enrollments in programs with the highest grade-point cutoffs\u2014those with greater international integration\u2014and an increase in dropout and termination rates, especially in engineering, agricultural science, and other exact sciences. The average dropout rates, 12.4% in the master’s and 11.6% for PhDs, were more significant in private institutions and in courses with lower grade cutoffs during that same period. \u201cThe reasons for the dropouts aren\u2019t clear and need further study,\u201d says Baeta Neves. \u201cI would look closely at the situational factors, such as the cooling economy, and structural factors, such as the grant amounts and the mismatch with student expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>
![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/028-035_capa_doutores-do-brasil_315-2-desktop-true.png\")
\n <\/picture>Alexandre Affonso<\/span><\/div>Although it highlights the system’s successful growth over the last decade and its expansion into every region of Brazil, the report also presents other worrying indicators. One of them is a marked degree of underfunding. \u201cThere are many postgraduate research projects that are conducted without any type of funding or grants,\u201d says Baeta Neves. In 2020, more than half of postgraduate research projects overall did not have any type of support. The situation is more critical in the areas of letters, linguistics, and the arts (almost 70%), and applied social sciences (60%). \u201cIt would appear that we\u2019re getting blood from a stone,\u201d says Baeta Neves. The funding model adopted in Brazil over recent decades focuses on supporting projects through agencies such as CNPq and state foundations, and offering grants to students working on these projects, with an emphasis on CAPES programs. Pedrosa, from UNICAMP, points out that this situation may vary by region, depending on each state’s capacity to invest in science. \u201cIn S\u00e3o Paulo, there was an increase in state tax collection and, consequently, in FAPESP’s budget. Unless the international situation complicates things, this should preserve funding for a robust set of projects in the state in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Brazilian postgraduate system was built over the last six decades and has become one of the most productive in the world. In 1965, a decision from Brazil’s Federal Education Council organized the system along the lines still in effect today, with two modalities: stricto sensu<\/em> degree programs, aimed at academic careers, and lato sensu<\/em> programs, shorter specialization courses for those who work in business and other activities. The council also established the academic categories for master’s and doctoral degrees. In the mid-1970s, CAPES created a model for evaluating courses, which gives grades and guides the distribution of funds for the programs. This gave the assessments an organizing, multiplier effect on the system, particularly in public universities.<\/p>\n The recent drop in demand has raised another type of question: why is it necessary to continue increasing the number of master’s and PhD graduates year after year? \u201cOur system was created mainly to train professors, but today universities are hiring fewer and fewer,\u201d explains Pedrosa. \u201cPrivate higher education is still growing, but there’s no pressure on them to hire PhDs.\u201d On the other hand, there has been an increase in interest in executive master’s degrees\u2014MBAs, short-term, lato sensu<\/em> courses that offer distance-learning options, which saw enrollment increase by 72% between 2016 and 2019, according to the SEMESP Institute. Professional master’s programs monitored by CAPES also experienced larger demand, with more than 62,000 enrollments in 2019, according to the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research (INEP), an agency of the Ministry of Education.<\/p>\n International comparisons indicate that Brazil trains fewer high-level human resources than developed countries. With 10.4 doctorates awarded per 100,000 inhabitants, Brazil performs better than Mexico (7.6), Turkey (7.6), or Chile (3.8), but is far behind the United States (21.9), Germany (34.4), and the United Kingdom (42.7). There is potential for growth at newer universities and those still in consolidation. \u201cIn some disciplines the ratio of students to professors in the programs is low, so availability could be increased,\u201d says Baeta Neves. \u201cThere may, however, be a limit in some regions given the number of people that manage to achieve higher education.\u201d The pandemic is another factor aggravating this problem, because of its effect on the number of graduates. In 2020, there was a 21% drop in graduates from federal universities overall and 20% from state universities, compared to 2019, according to data from the INEP Higher Education Census. In the private university system, there was a rise of 7.5%.<\/p>\n Political scientist Elizabeth Balbachevsky, a professor at the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences at USP, affirms that Brazil will continue to need a workforce with advanced qualifications and specific training for research activities, although this demand varies from sector to sector. \u201cThere are very competitive areas where this type of professional is needed, such as computing, information technology, and artificial intelligence. State-of-the-art agribusiness also has a demand,\u201d she explains. She notes, however, that many Brazilian companies still maintain a strategy of reproducing mature technologies. \u201cFor a significant part of the business sector, what makes sense is imitation, in which at most what’s necessary is competence in reverse engineering. There’s no need to hire a researcher. A good engineer is sufficient.\u201d<\/p>\n The most recent data on the postgraduate job market in Brazil predates the pandemic and pointed to a much more favorable employment situation than the average for the rest of the population. The last issue of the \u201cMaster’s and Doctorates\u201d series, produced by the Center for Management and Strategic Studies (CGEE), was published three years ago. It showed that 72.3% of the 230,000 PhDs and 62.2% of the 570,000 Brazilians with master’s degrees were formally employed in 2017\u2014these rates, however, were about 5 percentage points lower than in 2012, when the economy was growing. In 2016, the year in which the growth rates of Gross Domestic Product and employment in Brazil saw significant reductions (-3.3% and -4.2%, respectively), the growth rates of formal employment for master’s graduates were positive, (+6%) and (+8.6%) for PhDs, according to the study.<\/p>\n<\/div> One of the explanations for this performance is the fact that a significant portion of these professionals work in government administration, where employment is stable. In 2017, most PhDs worked at universities and state agencies: 47.9% at the federal level and 20% at the state level, while only 9.6% worked at private companies. Among the master’s graduates, there was greater employment in the private arena: 22.7% worked in the federal administration, 19.8% for state governments, and 22.2% at private companies. In 2017, the average remuneration was R$16,000 per month for PhDs and R$10,800 for master’s degrees, with the highest salaries documented in the areas of applied social sciences and engineering. \u201cThe market assimilation of postgraduates isn’t limited to formal employment,\u201d explains Sofia Daher, the technical advisor at the CGEE who coordinates the publications. \u201cIn one ongoing study, we observed that 16.8% of PhDs declared themselves to be partner-owners of companies, a sign that a portion of them are attracted to entrepreneurship.\u201d<\/p>\n Sociologist Simon Schwartzman, from the Institute for Economic Policy Studies in Rio de Janeiro, draws attention to one aspect of Brazil’s postgraduate system that he considers to be a drawback: the system of maintaining master’s degrees as a prerequisite\u2014in practice\u2014for obtaining a doctorate, resulting in inordinately long stays at universities for students. In a study recently published on his website, Schwartzman showed that, in the United States, 44.7% of PhDs graduated before the age of 30, compared to only 10.5% in Brazil (see table<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cIn other countries, brilliant young people go straight into doctoral programs and after publishing two or three significant papers, they are considered trained researchers,\u201d he says. Brazilian universities only very rarely admit students directly into PhD programs. In European Union countries the problem was confronted by condensing the training time: an undergraduate degree takes from three to four years, the master’s from one-and-a-half to two years, and a doctorate takes from two to four years. According to Schwartzman, later education is seen as detrimental in certain areas of knowledge. \u201cIn mathematics, for example, it’s been established that if researchers don’t make a significant contribution by the age of 30, they won’t make a significant contribution later. This logic doesn’t hold for the social sciences.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe design of the graduate studies system in Brazil is wrong at an institutional level,\u201d asserts Balbachevsky. \u201cA model that keeps young talent inside the university for so many years earning a minimum wage is not sustainable.\u201d She brings up another example from the US model: only a minority of students receive financial support to dedicate themselves exclusively to research. \u201cMost of the grants are for research assistants, in which the student is involved with the university’s core activities, teaching courses, and helping to design research and extension projects. They receive a rich education and are well prepared to enter the market.\u201d Balbachevsky advocates maintaining master’s programs, but not as a prerequisite for a doctorate. \u201cThe master’s degree is a mark of quality that the research university provides the job market,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The drop in demand and in the number of graduates reflects the current turbulent moment in Brazilian graduate studies. Last year, the four-year assessment of graduate programs, led by CAPES since the 1970s, met with an unprecedented challenge in the courts. The publication of the programs’ assessed performances, which receive grades from 3 to 7, has been suspended (see <\/em>Pesquisa FAPESP issue n\u00ba 309<\/em><\/a>). Also delayed by the pandemic, discussions on the National Postgraduate Plan (PNPG) for the decade 2021\u20132030 have not yet been conducted and it is still unknown what goals will have to be achieved in the coming years.<\/p>\n The report by Baeta Neves and McManus was produced when the former president of CAPES took over the Paschoal Senise Chair, created by the Dean of Graduate Studies at USP, with the specific objective of bringing forward ideas and proposing innovations for the next PNPG. One fundamental question raised in the document is if the courses have become detached from the demands of Brazilian society. Baeta Neves observes that even the teacher’s role has been undergoing a transformation. \u201cThe teacher isn’t just that person who’s busy teaching classes, maintains expertise in a certain field of knowledge, and is dedicated to academic research. They’re also expected to transform knowledge into social and economic value and produce innovation. Does it look like we’re succeeding in adapting the graduate programs to this reality?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n Among its recommendations, the report points to a need to invest more in the quality of postgraduate programs than in expanding them, integrating professors and researchers from various regions, institutions, and disciplines, and opting for more flexible formats of shorter duration, as evidenced by the demand for MBA courses. The document also considers recent experience with remote work as important to increasing international cooperation. \u201cThe pandemic has precipitated a new environment for internationalizing academic and research activities, focusing on ‘internationalization at home,’ as well as the creation of national and international networks,\u201d the report states.<\/a><\/p>\n![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/028-035_capa_doutores-do-brasil_315-3-desktop-true.png\")
\n <\/picture>Alexandre Affonso<\/span><\/div>![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/028-035_capa_doutores-do-brasil_315-4-desktop.png\")
\n <\/picture>Alexandre Affonso<\/span>\n![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/028-035_capa_doutores-do-brasil_315-5-desktop.png\")
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