This is the 14th installment of The Cocoon Goes Global, a series that gives a sense of what the philosophy profession looks like outside of the Anglophone West. This is a guest contribution by Nastassja Pugliese, Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Education at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
From its lavish biodiversity to the inexhaustible variety of its cultural and ethnic expressions, Brazil is a country where diversity abounds. One exception to this rule lies in the relative unity of the structure of the public system of education across the country. In this post, I will try to show what is it like to be a philosopher in Brazil.
Brazil is a country where access to higher education is a constitutional right[1]. The fact that higher education is a constitutional right makes Brazilian public universities key actors in structuring Brazilian society. The idea behind the law is that by allowing and guaranteeing access of citizens from all social classes to good institutions of higher education, democracy is strengthened. Under this national policy, the quality of all universities is periodically evaluated by a central federal council (CAPES) and governments sponsor research either through the federal agency for national development (CNPQ) or state foundations for research support (FAPs). This means that most of the teaching and almost all highly specialised research done in Brazilian universities as well as almost every penny employed to run the academic machinery in public universities comes from tax money (either from a federal or a state budget).
Now take a moment to imagine the size of Brazil. With a continental dimension, Brazil has 26 states (and 1 federal district), but it counts 69 federal universities with elite institutions ranked among the best in the world. Its educational system, to be more accurate, is mixed, which means that public institutions (state or federally funded) coexist with private institutions (which can be either for-profit or not-for-profit like the Catholic universities). Now imagine the economic potential of its higher education system if the public sector moved to a for-profit system where education is no longer understood as a right but as a privileged for those who can afford. This has been a permanent threat but today, more than ever before, the public education system is on the razor’s edge.
I will not expose these difficulties here because the particularities of the Brazilian educational experience are so rich and positive that it will do more good if I tell you about the impressive and (I think) exemplar politics of higher education that has been in place for decades.
My report may sound outdated given the current tensions, but the fact is that the public system is still a reality and those that benefit from it do hope that it does not ever become extinct. My report may also sound too optimistic and unproblematic, but this is a conscious choice. I’ll leave the particular - and more complex - problems for another opportunity. I will divide my post in three sections: the upbringing of an academic, the job market, and the life after securing a job. I am not going to talk about my personal experiences but only describe the structure of the educational system in all those stages. I also chose to ignore intersectional variables (problems related to class, race, and gender) here even knowing how important they are for grasping the whole picture.
The upbringing of an academic
Public universities are gratuitous. But that’s not all. Across the country, in every public university which graduate program scores high in quality at the government ratings, there will be a variety of kinds of funding opportunities from undergraduate to graduate level teaching and research.
Besides not having to pay (other than your taxes) for pursuing a bachelors degree (or a licentiate degree) in Philosophy, students often have the opportunity to receive assistantships if they have an economic hardship (bolsa auxílio), to receive assistantships to start a research career (bolsa de iniciação científica) or a teaching career (bolsa de iniciação à docência) or even an assistantship to assist a professor with in-classroom activities (bolsa de extensão, bolsa de monitoria). The idea here is that some of those assistantships avoid evasion helping low-income students to remain in the university, other assistantships function as a support system for careers in higher education, and there are even assistantship that has as a goal the integration of the university with society through funding of continued education.
The structure provides a remunerated training in scientific research from early on, forming a bold structure that offers funding in all levels of the academic development. There are aforementioned assistantships (bolsas) for undergraduate students who want technical training in research and teaching, but also research assistantship for master students and for doctoral students (research only with no teaching duties!). When pursuing a PhD, students also have the opportunity of doing paid research internships in universities from everywhere across the globe (Bolsa-sanduíche). Some of these international research experience scholarships are seasonal, such as Bolsa de Doutorado Pleno and the Science without borders program. And there are also different kinds of post-doctoral research fellowships.
Some universities adopt quotas for transgender, women, indigenous, black, and low income students. This happens because it has been increasingly recognised that minorities are not well represented in the student population due to their greater difficulty of access (there is a competitive entrance exam and performance in undergraduate courses is key for being awarded assistantships).
Finally, journals in Brazil are part of an open access politics. Most of them are organised and led by groups of volunteer scholars. Peer-reviewed journals receive high scores in the CAPES ranking and are more valued when it comes to promotion and hiring. The articles published are immediately available for readers through a central open access platform[2]. This practice is based on the fact that since most research is paid with tax money, the result should be accessible to all.
This structure of public funding coexists with private fundings of all sorts. However, funding with the structure of the public kind has never been proposed by any private company as of yet. Brazilian government is the main investor in Brazilian education up until now.
If brain drain is a reality today in Brazilian academia, it is because the national politics towards investment in education is changing.
The job market
Most often a recent PhD will work in high-schools (Philosophy is part of the high-school curricula of both private and public schools) or find a postdoctoral research position. More fortunate ones will land a permanent job in a less central or less prestigious public or private university. Usually only scholars with various years of experience guarantee a job in central universities. Although there are private university jobs (both temporary and permanent), their hiring system is not homogeneous so it is hard to give a picture of their job market conundrum.
Public university jobs, on the contrary, have a very particular (and unified) hiring system called “Concurso Público”. Since all jobs for professors in public universities are public jobs, professors are public servants working either for the state or the federal government. The selection process is rough and it sometimes takes various attempts at different universities until one is able to become a “professor concursado”[3].
The Concurso Público hiring system is an extremely tiring, financially costive, bureaucratically challenging, long process. One can never apply for dozens of positions at the same time and cross one’s fingers while waiting for being called for an interview or campus visit. Concursos happen one at a time, and each application should be tailored and fully focused on that particular position. It could not be otherwise for the examinations during the Concursos are week-long and demand a fly-out (always funded by the applicant) for taking on-site exams. So you buy your plane tickets, book a hotel for a week in order to take the exams. Everyone that applies to the opening and provides all the documentation that is demanded in the edital (the regulations ruling the exam and that particular hiring process) will take the exams.
The caveat of “having provided all the documentation” is important for this is not a simple procedure: one has to put together a long dossier documenting (with originals!) all steps of one’s own academic life, from certificates of participation to award letters.
The phase of the examination is overwhelming. Usually there are 4 exams: curriculum analysis, written exam, teaching examination, oral exam (defense of one’s academic production or research project for the following 4 years). Each exam happens in a different day, and one follows the other. After four days of exams, without the results of any, you wait to be given all the grades and final result on the fifth day. Usually only the first place is called and hired.
The written exam is a lot like a qualifying exam from American Universities: you are given a list of ten topics and at the time of the event they will draw one. You are expected to write about the topic for four hours. Teaching exam works similarly: they draw your theme from a pool of possible topics and you are supposed to prepare a 45 minutes class to be taught on the following day. Power Points are allowed, but frowned upon most of the time.
The exams are graded and your performance is evaluated by a committee (banca) usually composed of five professors (three from the university that is hiring, and two outside professors).
The process is emotionally draining and extremely challenging. You can be an excellent researcher, have great teaching abilities or have an amazing CV, if you do not perform your best at all four exams during that very week, it won’t happen. And then, again, you will have to fly out to another place at another time when a new position opens. Very frustrating indeed. But once you get there, well… once you get there you have a permanent job as a professional philosopher (or as we like to say here, as an academic or as a professor of philosophy).
Life after securing a job
All in all permanent positions in the Brazilian Public system are very prestigious jobs. Usually they are in quite decent institutions with regular to fair infrastructures. The increasingly rare permanent public positions come with rights like paid maternity leave (of up to six months), paid vacations (45 days), 13rd salary (an extra monthly stipend at the end of the year to be added to the 12 months stipends), and other benefits such as pension plans.
Federal salaries are the same across the country and all professors of the same category receive the same income. In this sense, there is not a lot of faculty mobility based on expectations of salary increase. A professor in Rio makes the same as a professor in Amazonas. The difference is related with the costs of living. If you work in big cities such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte or Porto Alegre where services are more expensive, the salary will likely be tight. But if you work far from the economic center where life is cheaper, your salary will likely be good in comparison with other professional activities. However, problems like fluctuation of currency value, inflation, and loss of purchase power will affect professors as well as anyone.
In order to have funding for research, travel, and other academic activities, one has to apply for grants (either public or private, but as I said, most of the funding comes - or used to come - from the public sector). Being an academic philosopher is a lot like being a professional grant writer - but only if you are into it. Otherwise, you can very well keep research to a minimum and exercise your right of academic freedom and be a teaching focused professional. There are various academic profiles in the same department and the variety is even greater across disciplines in an institution. Professors who focus on teaching usually do not participate in the graduate programs.
After 30 months on a tenure-track job, one is evaluated for tenure (requirements are regulated by federal law). Once tenured, there is stability and permanence until retirement. Through the years, you are expected to have done service work and administrative work besides your research and teaching duties. Depending on the size of the department as well as one’s academic ranking, teaching duties can be light (1-1), moderate (2-2) or heavy (3-3).
Final remarks
I hope my quick and partial report reminds Brazilian scholars and professors how well structured is our higher-ed system and how powerful is its compromise with social justice. Because, unfortunately, these descriptions I just offered are about to become part of a distant past. It is unclear where higher education is heading given Brazil’s new policies for Education. Brazil hosts highly complex social and political phenomena that far from easy to being interpreted and understood. Brazilian academics will certainly have a lot to debate and discuss in the following months.
Notes
[1]In the Law of Guidelines and Foundations for National Education - LDB, there are at least four clauses consolidating the right of higher education: Article 1, VI (“gratuity of public education in public institutions”, XIII, “guaranteed right of education and lifelong learning”, and Article 4, V (“access to the highest levels of education, of research, and artistic creation according to each one’s capacities), and chapter IV of the law named “On Higher Education”. Same clauses appear in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, articles 205-214.
[2] For more on this, see https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/en/2018/02/07/accessible-scientific-output/
[3] The Concursos Públicos is a hiring system for the whole public service structure, ranging from public school teachers to doctors of public hospitals and prosecutors of the legal system.
Thanks for this fascinating report on being a philosopher in Brazil! I just wanted to comment to note that the author, Nastassja Pugliese, has a very interesting recent paper on Anne Conway's response to Spinoza (https://philpapers.org/rec/PUGMAI-2). I was just rereading the paper today to prepare to teach Conway, and so it felt like a nice stroke of luck for this to be posted at the same time.
Posted by: Daniel Moerner | 02/03/2020 at 08:06 PM
I prefer to comment anonymously to not suffer reprisal.
Although many elements in the text are correct and should be fought for, like salaries and other resources, the funniest thing is to observe the suppose best brazilians universities of the World does not ever appear in the 200+ top-ranked.
The education in Brazil is terrible for decades and the better University of Brazil, the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), maintained for São Paulo's state, received the equivalent donated to Harvard privately. Brazil insists to make an ode anticapitalist. It's beautiful, but besides not working, puts the level of students in the grave.
It's clear that be a philosopher in Brazil means put your heart in front of your brain.
Posted by: Anonymous | 02/08/2020 at 11:02 AM