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Britain Seeks to Recruit Thousands of Fee-Paying Students From Brazil

July 10, 2011, 3:00 pm

The British government is seeking to recruit thousands of students from Brazil in an effort to infuse extra cash into a higher-education system that has faced sweeping cuts in public financing, The Guardian reported.

The universities minister, David Willetts, and more than a dozen university vice chancellors met with Brazilian officials last month to discuss arrangements under which the Brazilian government would provide up to £18,700, or $30,000, a student in support for 10,000 students. Undergraduate tuition at universities in England is set to rise next year to a maximum of £9,000 for students from Britain and other European Union countries. According to The Guardian, concerns are growing “that the government’s funding model for higher education is becoming increasingly reliant on attracting overseas nationals who, if they had been born in the U.K., might have struggled to attain a place at a university in this country.”

The opposition Labour Party’s spokesman for higher education said that the government’s move “looks like a desperate attempt to help universities balance their books.”

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  • kimpetorin

    The face-to-face traditional educational modelswill be a luxury for the wealthy in the future. And perhaps not the distant future. Will campus life retain a cachet, much as it did in previous centuries?

  • cjones599

    I think the Gov is trying to attract the tech-savvy potential voters without knowing his subject at all.
    Did you bite?

  • 11126724

    And so, the right-wing attack on public higher education continues….
    What kind of a society will we be if they succeed?
    Not much.

  • http://mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey Jon Awbrey

    Pretty soon, no one will be professionals but hedge fund managers.

  • http://www.empowerbpo.com Jason

    jeanniec you are absolutely right i agree with you.

  • don6665

    I teach music, specifically voice, opera, and choral music. Of course, these courses are readily adaptable as online courses! Who needs live acoustical feedback with actual sound? And we can have an online choir with individuals in many sites! After all, we have easy technology! (Who sets it up? And what is the cost vs. live music education?)

  • don6665

    I teach music, specifically voice, opera, and choral music. Of course, these courses are readily adaptable as online courses! Who needs live acoustical feedback with actual sound? And we can have an online choir with individuals in many sites! After all, we have easy technology! (Who sets it up? And what is the cost vs. live music education?)

  • tiredofgarbage

    I bet the Big Ten schools (and others) can undercut them…what about $28,000/year/per student – tuition, room/board, and books – to attend American Universities?  Still more than the average in-state resident pays in most states.  Anyone willing to call Brazil? 

  • agrudjr

    @Tiredofgarbage: No can do. These would be out of state students.
    Here’s an example of the out of state total package (tuition, room, board, books, expenses, etc), for Purdue: $39,492.
    At Michigan, it would be significantly higher: $50K for lower division, $53K upper division.

  • 609zr

    Will the drug cartels consider this another means of distributing their products?

  • schwerdt

    I will always give a bit of a nudge to the candidate who has bothered to send a note (and I don’t mean a dashed off e-mail)). As was said above, it indicates something positive about the colleague I will be working with for years.

  • graddirector

    Maybe I am just too cynical, but as a search committee member, I always find receiving thank you notes  quite weird, bordering on sucking up.  The ones I have received always seem to come from the naive or smarmy candidate, not the ones I want as my future colleague.  However, this could be because I am in a science department and science faculty often have the opposite personality type that  goes into sales……

    However, a note from the candidate saying how excited they are about the job with specifics about how they can contribute…  If written well, this can be a real plus.

  • profjw

    I write thank-you notes — but I use e-mail, I do them quickly (to me shows efficiency, not “dashed off”), but usually to the head of the search committee, the person to whom I’ll report — not just to anyone who was in on a phone interview.

    On the other side, NOT writing a thank-you note after an on-campus interview IS held against you in our faculty searches.  If you can’t “dash off” something, to someone — we think you’re not terribly interested. 

  • 11185283

    I still write thank-you notes to search committees and anyone else I’ve met with in an interview.  Not because I expect it will propel my candidacy to do so, but because it’s one of the very few parts of the process I can control.  Why not be prompt, courteous and collegial?  Much of the rest of the search is usually none of these things. 

  • mbelvadi

    There was an earlier column in these forums about errors in resumes/cover letters and whether candidates should be judged negatively. I was one among many who thinks they should, and I see a connection to the issue of Thank You’s. Both reflect on the awareness of professional academic standards and expectations, and a willingness to take the time to follow the “rules of the game” (the hiring game).

    A failure to follow those rules is a warning flag that this is a person who might not be properly socialized into the standards of academic comportment. Such lack could lead to minor problems like uncomfortable behavior in staff meetings, or major things like lawsuits when the person behaves illegally inappropriately one way or another towards students or other staff (sexual harassment, racial discrimination, etc.).  

  • denisebauer

    We had a candidate send typed thank you notes! There are so many variations on this theme. I can say, however the absence of any thank you – hand written, typed, emailed or spoken – does not reflect well and should be avoided.

  • simplesimon

    We now live in a world where most candidates apply for positions and they never get so much as an acknowledgement email (nevermind a card) that says their materials were received.  Even when candidates fly across country for a campus interview search committees often reject them without so much as a, “no thanks” leaving many candidates wondering . . .

    And now these same search committees are going to judge someone because they did not send a perfunctory thank you note?  Do as I say, not as I do, eh?

  • Brian Abel Ragen

    Even students I interview now send me thank-you notes. I makes me vaguely ill every time I get one. But the students at least have an excuse. Since I’m an alumni volunteer, I am doing them a favor.

    I am not doing a favor for a perspective colleague or employee. We both need something and are getting together to talk about whether we can provide it for each other. There is no need for thank- you notes. When I get one I think, “What a brown-nosing git,” which tells me I have been interviewing too long and watching to much British TV.

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