Development of Doctoral Education in Brazil and Nicaragua: A Comparative Study

8/7/2019 Development of Doctoral Education in Brazil and Nicaragua: A Comparative Study

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Running head: MEASURING IMPACT 1

Measuring Impact of Fellowship Recipients on the Enhancement of Quality in Higher Education

Systems: A Comparative Study of Brazils CAPES and Nicaraguas SIDA/SAREC Program

By

John William Medendorp

For

Dr. James Fairweather

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for EAD 991B

May 2, 2010


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In this paper I propose a study to compare the impact of two programs to increase the

number of postgraduates in Brazil and Nicaragua. In each instance, the purpose of the program is

to increase the research and teaching capacity of the higher education system of their respective

countries by investing in promising individuals. The broader goal is to support national

socioeconomic development through increases in research and teaching capacity.

The first program I will study, known as the National Post-Graduate Plan (Plano

Nacional de Ps-Graduao - PNPG), is Brazils program for accelerating the formation of

human resources needed for teaching and for research activities (Leta, Lannes, & De Meis,

1998). It is funded by two governmental entities: the National Council for Scientific and

Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnolgico -

CNPq) and by the National Program for Personnel Development in High Education

(Coordenao de Aperfeioamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior- CAPES).

In Nicaragua, I propose to examine the SIDA/SAREC program (The Swedish Research

Council Formas, 2010). The SIDA/SAREC program is the initiative of the Swedish Research

Council Formas. The program is funded by the Swedish government. It is the only such program

operating in Nicaragua. The program works with specific universities in Nicaragua to increase

research capacity. Part of the program is to fund individuals for advanced degrees. Initially only

Ph.D.s were financed. Eventually the program was expanded in order to include Masters

degrees. As of 2001, the program had financed 55 Masters and Ph.D. students of which 25 had

graduated (Bautista, Velho, & Kaplan, 2001).

The Usefulness of a Comparative Framework

In light of these similarities and key differences, I have chosen to conduct a comparative

study of the two postgraduate funding programs in Nicaragua and Brazil. A comparative study


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can have one or more of three distinct purposes: to provide insight into our own systems of

education, to identify and analyze similarities and differences in educational systems, processes

and outcomes in order to solve identified problems and/or suggest educational policy and

practice, to better understand the nature of the relationships between education and the broader

social, political and economic sectors of society, or promoting improved international

understanding, co-operation and goodwill (Crossley & Broadfoot, 1992, p. 106). In this study I

will focus on the second of these purposes, namely, to analyze similarities and differences for the

purpose of suggesting both policy and practice, or as Noah describes it to help in decision

making (Noah, 1984). The usefulness of comparative studies is that they can identify the

potentials and the limits of international borrowing and adaptation (Noah, 1984, p. 556). If done

properly, this study should serve as a vital tool for the government of Nicaragua in determining

where to invest future support for higher education. Currently, the Nicaraguan government

devotes 6% of the annual budget to higher education. These funds are spread widely and

indiscriminately across the system (Bernheim, 2009). This study will help to answer the question

whether the investment of those funds in the development of a cadre of scholars and a culture of

research would have a significant impact on the academic and research capacity of the higher

education system in Nicaragua.

According to Theisen and Adams, there are four types of comparative study: analytical,

descriptive, evaluative, exploratory (1990). The particular type of study I will undertake will be

evaluative. The distinguishing feature of an evaluative study is that it is used to test a particular

socia1 science hypothesis or a principle of professional practice. Evaluative research investigates

the issues concerning the merit, value, or worth of educational techniques or programs (Borg &

Gall, 1989; Theisen & Adams, 1990, p. 282). It may also be undertaken to assess the


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appropriateness of program changes (Theisen & Adams, 1990). In the evaluative study that I am

proposing, it will be used to test a principle of professional practice, namely, the use of funding

of individual scholars in postgraduate programs for the purpose of quality enhancement of the

professoriate. I will analyze and evaluate the relative impact of the Brazilian and Nicaraguan

programs.

Rationale for the Study

Although both countries are on the path of socioeconomic development, they find

themselves at different stages of that process, making a comparison potentially useful for

Nicaragua, which finds itself at the more primitive stage. A research oriented professoriate

makes two significant contributions to socioeconomic development. First, it supports the effort

of expansion of access to the higher education system as part of the transition to mass higher

education in pursuit of the knowledge society (Drucker, 1992, 1993, 2001) by training the

faculty of the future. Second, it provides the platform for the generation of new knowledge

through research that drives the new economy and provides solutions to intractable

socioeconomic problems (Altbach, 2007a; Antony & Knaus, 2002; Velho, 2004). In what

follows, I will explain the critical juncture at which Nicaragua finds itself in the reform of its

higher education system. I will then explain why Brazil may provide insight and potential

solutions to the problems Nicaragua is facing. Finally, I will describe a research design for a

comparative study of these two programs in order to explore their potential to inform and reform

each other.

The Nicaraguan Problem

Like many Latin American countries, Nicaragua has experienced explosive growth in

higher education, primarily in private education (Arocena & Sutz, 2005; Olivares, 2006b; Torres


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& Schugurensky, 2002). This growth has been both accommodated by and driven by private

education (Bernheim, 2009; Olivares, 2006b). Until the 1960s, higher education in Nicaragua

was represented by a single institution, the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua

(UNAM, formerly the University of Len), located in the second largest city, Leon. In the 1960s

the first private universities were licensed: the Central American University (UCA), the Central

American Business Administration University, and the Polytechnic University of Nicaragua

(Arnove, 1995; Bernheim, 2009).

In 1990, the outgoing administration of Daniel Ortega pushed through the Nicaraguan

National Assembly (NNA) a comprehensive law of university autonomy (Law 89). Although

intended to protect the universities from ideological influence by the incoming neo-liberal

regime of Violeta Chamorros, the law had the effect of opening the university market to private

providers (Arnove, 1995; Bernheim, 2009; Olivares, 2006b). In the decade after the approval of

the law, 21 private universities were licensed. Then again, between 2001 and 2006, a further 23

were licensed for a total of 44 private institutions. Since the date of Oliveres publication

(Olivares, 2006b), four additional private universities have been approved by the Consejo

Nacional de Universidades (CNU) for a total of 52 institutions (Consejo Nacional de

Universidades, 2010b).

As of 2006, these new universities together enrolled 65,500 students (Olivares, 2006b).

Since the 1980s, the sole public university had been expanded to four campuses. In 2006 the

four campuses together enrolled 49,900 students. Another 22,060 students are enrolled in what

are known as the "old privates," i.e., those that were founded before the passage of law 89. The

new private sector now outstrips public enrollments and rivals the public/old private sector as the

largest provider of higher education.


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Unfortunately, although the law of autonomy protected the universities from heavy-

handed state intervention, it also shielded them from public accountability. The result has been a

rapidly expanding higher education sector with very low quality. Few university professors hold

doctoral degrees. Most universities function at the periphery of the international scientific

community, unable to produce and adapt the knowledge needed to confront the most urgent

economic and social problems of the country (Olivares, 2006b, p. 13).

Attempted Solutions

The volatile and indiscriminate proliferation of institutions of few resources, low

capacity, and low quality prompted an effort by the Nicaraguan government, in collaboration

with the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB), to rein in some of the blanket autonomy of the

universities through the elaboration of a legal framework for evaluating universities. As part of

this effort, in the year 2000, the IDB approved a loan to the government of Nicaragua for the

improvement of the tertiary education systems. The goals of the program were three:

In its internal architecture the Project consisted of three components. Component

I: A process of evaluation of tertiary education (with a total of $1.1 million).

Component II: A program to improve links between tertiary education and the

business sector as well as with secondary and technical education ($1.0 million).

Component III: Institutional stabilization through efficient and modern university

administration (1.2 million). (Olivares, 2006a).

The project was completed in 2006. In that same year, a second law, Law 582, known as

the Ley General de Educacin, or general law of education created the Consejo Nacional de

Evaluacin y Acreditacin, or the National Council for Evaluation and Accreditation (CNEA) as

a state agency with powers to evaluate and accredit institutions of higher education (Olivares,


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2006a, p. 8). Although this second law created the agency, it did not define the authority of the

agency or mechanisms for applying that authority to the higher education sector.

This lack was supplied by a third law, Law 704, passed by the NNA in November of

2009. The third law mandates an evaluation and accreditation system that mirrors, in many ways,

the processes of the North American accrediting agencies self-evaluation based on a set of

general (but as of yet undefined) criteria, followed by the visit of external evaluators, and the

issuance of a dictamen or declarative report recommending accreditation or indicating

shortfalls in one or more of the criteria. Due to legal challenges by the universities to the

encroachment of the state on university autonomy represented by the legislation, however, the

law remains unsigned on the President Ortegas desk. In the meantime, the university sector

continues to grow while fundamental issues of university quality remain unaddressed, most

importantly, the lack of a qualified professoriate.

Law 704 calls for a qualified professoriate (Chapter I. Article 10.Paragraphs 4, 5). These

two paragraphs form part of a longer list of requirements for universities. Paragraph four requires

that professors have attained the degree level at which they are teaching and in the area in which

they are teaching. For example, if a professor is teaching mathematics in a Bachelors degree

program, he or she must have attained a Bachelors degree in mathematics before teaching.

Paragraph five requires that each university undertake at least one research project per year in

each one of the areas in which degrees are granted. The question remains, however, whether this

approach to developing a qualified professoriate will in fact achieve the goal and lend much

needed improvement to the higher education system of Nicaragua. It is surprising, in fact, that, in

light of the recognized lack of qualified scholars in the Nicaraguan higher education system


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(Bernheim, 2009; Olivares, 2006a), neither the IDB loan criteria nor the ensuing legal structure

make any provision for the development of a qualified professoriate.

Brazilian Results

When considering possible answers to the question of an unqualified professoriate, Brazil

would seem to be a natural point of comparison. Although facing many of the same development

challenges that Nicaragua does, unlike Nicaragua, the Brazilian graduate education system is the

most prolific in Latin America, boasting the most masters and doctoral programs. In 2001 alone

it awarded 6,000 doctoral degrees and 30,000 masters degrees (Altbach, 2007a; S.

Schwartzman, 2006). According to a study using the National Science Indicators database,

organized by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), from 1981 to 1993 Latin Americas

scientific publications rose from 1.3% to 1.8% of the world scientific output (Krauskopf, Vera,

Krauskopf, & Welljams-Dorof, 1995). During that same period, Brazilian publications rose from

0.29% to 0.56% of the total but composed 37.1% of all Latin American publications. This was

accompanied by an increase in Brazil's citation impact-relative to the world (Leta, et al., 1998).

Even more striking have been recent gains. The number of Brazilian publications indexed by the

Institute for Scientific Information (lSI, now Thomson Scientific) increased both in absolute

number and in worldwide share in the period from 1981 to 2002 from 1,887 to 11,285 and from

0.44 per cent to 1.55 per cent, respectively (Leta, 2005).

Like Nicaragua, Brazil went through a remarkable period of higher education system

expansion in roughly the same time period. Total system undergraduate enrollment in Brazil

increased from 1.5 million in 1992 to over 3.8 million in 2003 (Sobrinho & Brito, 2009). Like

the Nicaraguan government, the Brazilian government is currently in the process of reforming


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its higher education system under considerable pressure to bring a further increase in

enrollment (McCowan, 2007).

The greatest difference comes in the sheer scope of the Brazilian system. As of 2008,

Brazil had 257 public institutions of higher education (federal, state and municipal) and 2,141

private institutions. Like Nicaragua, the private institutions are divided between non-profit and

for-profit. Unlike Nicaragua, the higher education classification system identifies three types of

institutions: universities (poly-disciplinary, with a teaching, research, and service mission, and

postgraduate degree programs), university centers (without the research component), and

integrated learning institutions or colleges devoted to teaching only (McCowan, 2007; Mello,

Maculan, & Renault, 2008). Nicaragua only distinguishes between universities and higher

technical institutes, which are roughly equivalent to the technical institutes in Brazil (without the

quality and prestige) and probably more akin to community colleges in the United States.

Ninety-two percent of the total 2,398 institutions in Brazil are small institutions dedicated solely

to teaching and are aimed at providing rapid degrees to the students, with the objective of

facilitating their integration into the labor market (Sobrinho & Brito, 2009). In other words,

Brazil faces some of the same quality challenges that Nicaragua does.

In order to be classified as a university, institutions must have at least 12 undergraduate

degree programs in at least three different disciplines and have a viable institutional outreach

program. They must also have graduate programs in at least three fields of study at the Masters

level and one program at the PhD. level. In addition, at least one third of the faculty must be

contracted on a full-time basis and at least 50% of the academic faculty must possess a Masters

or Ph.D. degree. In order to be classified as a university center, the institution must offer at

least six undergraduate degree programs in at least two disciplines. It must an institutional


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outreach program, have 25% of the faculty contracted full-time and at least one third of the

faculty must possess Masters or Ph.D. degrees. Integrated leaning centers must offer at least

one undergraduate degree program and must have prior government approval before opening

new programs. (McCowan, 2007; Mello, et al., 2008).

The Brazilian Professoriate

The very real, detectable difference, however, between the Brazilian and Nicaraguan

systems comes in the area of faculty. Schwartzman and Balbachevsky divide the professoriate

into three discernable levels (1996). The elite consist of about 28,000 faculty with doctoral

degrees or equivalent titles, and about 100,000 students in M.A. and Ph.D. programs in the best

public universities, mostly in the south eastern sector of Brazil. Faculty salaries are relatively

high and additional income can be earned through fellowships and research grants. The

postgraduate students are selected through a competitive process, pay no tuition, and typically

receive scholarships.

The next level consists of approximately 92,000 professors in public universities,

servicing approximately one million undergraduate students. Those members of the faculty who

teach in postgraduate programs in public institutions must also teach undergraduates. The

credentials of this group have been improvingin 2001, 36% held Ph.D.s, and 30% held a

Masters degree. Faculty in public universities is usually contracted full-time and are considered

civil servants, meaning they also receive government benefits. Although contracts forbid it,

many members of this group earn additional income through consulting work and teaching at

private institutions (Ribeiro, 2007, 2008; E. Schwartzman & Balbachevsky, 1996; S.

Schwartzman, 2006).


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The lowest level consists of 150,000 professors serving about 2.5 million students in

private institutions. Most of them work on term contracts, are not well qualified, and take on

multiple teaching contracts at a time in order to make ends meet. In 2002, according to

Schwartzman (2006) only 11% possessed a Ph.D., 38% a Masters degree; and only 16% had full-

time contracts. Another 56% had no contract at all, working on a per-class basis. Some are public

university employees moonlighting in private schools; others are retired from the public sector

(S. Schwartzman, 2006). They are not unionized as public sector employees are (Ribeiro, 2007,

2008; E. Schwartzman & Balbachevsky, 1996; S. Schwartzman, 2006).

Even at this lowest level the Brazilian system outpaces the eleven elite institutions of

higher education in Nicaragua, where only 6% of the faculty hold doctoral degrees, 44% hold

Masters, and the rest hold bachelors degrees (Consejo Nacional de Universidades, 2010a). Even

these numbers for Nicaragua are deceiving, however, since many of the Masters degrees are not

in the discipline in which professors are teaching. Rather, they are general education degrees,

focusing on university teaching, learning, research, and administration, for the purpose of

improving faculty credentials in anticipation of further state demands for advanced degrees for

Nicaraguan faculty members. These efforts are, of course, not wasted, since they improve the

teaching and research skills of university faculty. They do little, however, to advance the

knowledge base and research output of the various disciplines.

Conceptual Framework

The model for evaluating these two programs plays out across the continuing debate over

higher education as a public or private good (Altbach, 2007b; Altbach, Reisberg, & Rumbley,

2009; Levy, 1982, 1986; Marginson, 2007). Although one of the programs examined is under the

auspices of a government sponsored international development agency, the goals of both


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programs clearly place them on the public good side of this debate. There are four prevailing

models of doctoral program assessment: reputational assessment, student assessment, statistical

assessment, and external review assessment (Golde, Jones, Bueschel, & Walker, 2006). Each of

them has its strengths and weaknesses.

Reputational assessment, such as that used by the National Research Council, polls the

impressions of other members of the academic community to rank the institutions and

individuals, but does not take into account other elements in the quality of faculty

performance, such as contributions to teaching of graduate and undergraduate students or

contributions to the welfare of the departments, the institution, or the larger academic community

(Goldberger, et al., 1995, pp. 22-23).

Student assessment, as the name implies, refers to evaluations done by students of their

own doctoral programs. These types of assessment measure the value of the program from the

perspective of the students goals. It does not measure the contribution of the program to the

development of the academy, society, or the economy.

Statistical assessment does measure program outcomes, but the most widely collected

and reported measures are graduation/attrition rates and average time to degree as well as

program placements (Golde, et al., 2006, p. 56). Such evaluations focus on institutional success,

but, again, do little to measure the impact of the program on the university system as a whole, on

society, or on the economy. As a measure, it falls short of what I am trying to accomplish in this

study.

A final form of assessment is the external review assessment. As the name implies, it

consists of a visiting team of experts who evaluate the program and make recommendations for

its improvement. This type of evaluation could be useful if it selected the right criteria.


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Nevertheless, there are very few institutions or external review teams that focus on the criteria

that would be of help in understanding how the program impacts the academy, society, or the

economy.

In lieu of these approaches, the Carnegie Foundation has devised an assessment tool that

begins with the end in mind. It first posits a purpose for higher education: the purpose of

doctoral education is to develop students as stewards of the discipline (Golde, et al., 2006, p.

59). It then asks three questions around that purpose:

1. What is the purpose of the doctoral program? What does it mean to develop

students as stewards of the discipline? What are the desired outcomes of the

program?

2. What is the rationale and educational purpose of each element of the doctoral

program? Which elements of the program should be retained and affirmed?

Which elements could usefully be changed or eliminated?

3) How do you know? What evidence aids in answering those questions? What

evidence can be collected to determine whether changes serve the desired

outcomes. (Golde, et al., 2006, p. 60).

The Carnegie model could prove useful if the appropriate purpose for doctoral education were

defined and if the appropriate criteria were applied for gathering evidence. Yet, for the purposes

of this study, there is no model in existence to structure the assessment of the impact of

individually trained Masters and Ph.D. recipients in terms of their contribution to academic

excellence and growth and to the growth of society and the economy. In order to develop these

criteria, I turn to methodology.


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Research Question

In an effort to get at the comparative issue, I will focus on a single researchable question:

What gains have Brazils Coordenao de Aperfeioamento de Pessoal de Nvel Superior

(CAPES) and Nicaraguas collaboration with the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation

with Developing Countries (SIDA/SAREC) produced for the quality enhancement of the

professoriate in their respective higher education systems? CAPES is a program established in

1951 by the Brazilian government in order to, among other program goals, increase the number

of students receiving Masters and doctoral degrees (Mello, et al., 2008; Ribeiro, 2007, 2008; S.

Schwartzman, 2006). The Nicaraguan government has no corresponding program, but has

entered into international agreement with SIDA/SAREC in order to increase the number of

advanced degree holders in its higher education system. This program has been in existence for

twenty years (Bernheim, 2009; Velho, 2004).

Methodology

Although I am not currently trained in quantitative methods, in what follows I will

attempt to describe the components of a quantitative model for an inductive study (Kogan, 1996),

measuring the impact of fellowship recipients on the quality enhancement of the higher

education system of their respective countries. Since there is currently no model designed

precisely for this end, I will construct my own model, justifying each component through the

existing literature. In order to construct this model, I propose defining the impact on quality

enhancement in terms of four variables, which will serve as my units of analysis (Wirt, 1980):

number of graduate degrees attained, research output of program graduates, number of students

taught, and number of new scholars produced. I will define each of these variables further below.


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The first variable, number of graduate degrees issued, will be calculated on the total

number of degrees attained by recipients of scholarships from the two programs minus the rate of

attrition. Graduation versus attrition has long been a standard part of graduate program

assessment (Golde, et al., 2006; Wulff & Nerad, 2006). The purpose of this approach is to take

into account both quantity and efficiency in calculating the impact of investment in degree

attainment. I did not take into account time to degree, another standard criteria for measuring

graduate education, since it will be taken into account in the fourth variable, listed below.

The second variable, research output, will take into account three factors: the number of

scholarly works presented, published, and cited, as well as the number of dollars won through

research grants, and a scale to measure extension impact, including patents. Hirschs index for

research output is often considered the standard (Hirsch, 2005). Hirsch has been critiqued for

focusing exclusively on publications. Scientific research usually, but not necessarily, ends in

publication. Especially in developing countries, where technological advance is as important or

more important than scholarly publication, a citation index does not accurately portray a

researches contribution to socioeconomic advance. In order to fully measure the outcome of

scientific research in developing contexts, such results as extension, patents, and grants should be

included (Gustafson, 2009; Marginson, 2008). For that reason, we will use instead a modified

form of the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index (Academic Analytics, 2010; Piper, 2007),

expanded to include extension and patents (Gustafson, 2009; Marginson, 2008).

The third variable, number of students taught, is intended to be a measure of influence of

fellowship recipients in the higher education system as a whole. There is disagreement on

whether teaching is a scholarly output or scholarly function and, therefore, whether it should be

included in scholarly productivity measures (Townsend & Rosser, Fall, 2007). In the


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development of a higher education system, however, teaching is an indispensable part of the

growth of the scientific culture. For that reason it is included here as part of the measure of

scholarly output. The different degree levels will be weighted in order to give greatest

importance to doctoral students and lesser importance to Masters and undergraduate students.

Also, the number of graduate assistants supervised will be included in this calculation.

The final variable, number of scholars produced, will measure the number of times that

the funding recipient has either supervised or participated in a committee for the dissertation, or

Masters research project, of a successful graduate student, since this too is a significant

contribution to the system as a whole. Several studies have detailed the impact of the dissertation

advisor on the research productivity (C. E. Hilmer & M. J. Hilmer, 2007), publication (Hilmer &

Hilmer, 2009), and job placement (M. J. Hilmer & C. E. Hilmer, 2007). Clearly the role of

dissertation advising and, by extension, project mentoring, impacts the growth of new scholars.

For that reason, I will include this measure as well.

For the purposes of this study, a formula weighting each of these four variables on a

composite scale of 100 points will be devised and a composite score produce for the two country

approaches. The A perfect score on all four variables would render, then, a composite score of

100. The ideal end of each scale will be based on output for the worlds leading

academic/research industries, in most cases, the United States (Altbach, 2007a). The relative

weight of each variable will have to be determined. Greater weight will be given to publications

as the gold standard of research output, with lesser proportions given to the other three. One

possible weighting of the variables could be, for example: research productivity 40 points,

graduates 20 points, extension 20 points, dissertation/project oversight 20 points. The exact

proportions of this scale would have to be worked out and justified through a wider study. The


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composite score produced by the addition of the four variables will then be multiplied by the

total student population divided by the total population. The resulting figure will define a

percentage of the total population who are enrolled in university. The rationale for this latter

calculation is that the more students enrolled in higher education, the greater the benefit to

society (Schofer & Meyer, 2005; Sperling, 2001; Trow, 2006). The resulting formula,

rudimentally described, will be:

In order to frame the analysis for comparative purposes, I will use figures from the last five years

only.

Data Collection and Data Analysis

Data collection will take three forms. First, a survey instrument will be prepared and will

be distributed to a scientifically selected representative sample of program participants in both

countries. The survey will test for the four variables mentioned above. Second, the data will be

triangulated with statistical information available through CEPAS and SAREC as well as

through the CNU. Follow-up interviews with select participants will further determine the

reliability of the data. Although the government ministries of Brazil keep meticulous records on

program participants, the collection of data in Nicaragua will be hampered somewhat by the fact

that extensive records have not been kept on the SIDA/SAREC program. I will have to generated

and assembled most of the data myself. Once the data sets have been compiled, the results will

be run through an SSPS program specially designed for analysis and the results will be displayed

graphically.


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Contextual Information

Noah identifies three abuses of comparative research that can render it misguided,

irrelevant or even dangerous: making a case, misinterpreting results, and ethnocentrism (Noah,

1984, pp. 558-561). I will use his categories in order to frame the question of contextualization

of the study.

Under making a case, Noah cautions against hastily applying one countrys results in

another countrys context. As he describes it, The authentic use of comparative study resides

not in wholesale appropriation and propagation of foreign practices but in careful analysis of the

conditions under which certain foreign practices deliver desirable results, followed by

consideration of ways to adapt those practices to conditions found at home. In the case of this

study, it might be easy to conclude that the impressive results displayed by the Brazilian

development efforts should be easily duplicated in Nicaragua.

There are, however, very important differences in the contexts of these two programs

that will warrant consideration. First, although Brazils research output is impressive by Latin

American standards, the measure used is volume. Under the circumstances, where Brazils total

population is nearly four times that of Nicaragua, an adjusted expectation should, at a minimum,

expect a research output that is at least four times that of Nicaragua.

Moreover, Brazil has the unique advantage of possessing rich and plentiful natural

resources. These resources have made Brazil one of the most developed nations in Latin America

with one of the lowest poverty indices in the region. Nicaragua, by way of contrast is among the

poorest and least developed of the Latin American nations (Perry, Lpez, Maloney, Arias, &

Servn, 2006).


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Also, Brazil has benefited from large scale, post World War II, European immigration.

This flow delivered to Brazil an entire generation of intellectuals and scholars trained extensively

in the Humboltian university tradition into the ranks of Brazils government and universities. It

explains, in part, the early development of the research focus in the Brazilian higher education

system fostered by the presence of these same influences in government. It is highly questionable

whether these historical patterns can be set aside in examining the prospects of Nicaragua to

surmount its chronic quality issues.

Finally, the fact that Brazils program is government sponsored and Nicaraguas program

is agency sponsored is telling. It highlights the fact that Brazils appreciation of research is

embedded in government culture. Such embedded appreciation means that Brazils government

has been willing to take the long view of investment in research and scholarship. Absent such

culture in Nicaragua, can a similar program survive the demands of impatient politicians,

overwhelmed by pressing social need, and themselves recipients of little and inferior education,

to produce immediate results? Unless there is an enculturation of such values in the Nicaraguan

leadership, the answer is predictable.

Under misrepresenting results, Noah cautions, explanatory models are not overly

strong, data are often defective, and criteria for confidence in making inferences are subject to

dispute (p. 559). It will be important to include in the results of the study not only limitations

but also warnings about their possible use and abuse. Already at the stage of the proposal, I see

enormous problems in data collection, analysis and dissemination. The definition of the weighted

scale, the forcing of uncooperative data into predefined categories, the display of raw data that

not only invites interpretation, but also misinterpretation each of these will demand a lengthy

caveat as to the possible errors in the calculations.


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Under ethnocentrism, Noah makes several points about the tendency to extrapolate use

results as part of an assumed agenda of modernization. In contemporary terminology, we might

substitute the term globalization for modernization. In both cases, the assumption seems to

be that entrance into the global economy is to the advantage of each nation. These are

assumptions that critical scholars have challenged (Hyslop-Margison & Sears, 2006; UNESCO

Forum on Higher Education Research and Knowledge, International Association of Universities,

Srlin, & Vessuri, 2007). I quote Noah at length here:

A great deal of work has been done in comparative education to trace the process

and correlates of the so-called modernization process. Special attention has been

paid to the contribution that schooling has made to those changes that mark the

transformation from a "traditional" to a "modernized" society. Patterns of change

that describe well what happened to European and North American societies are

assumed to be generalizable to other societies at a later date. Perhaps they are

generalizable; perhaps they are not. Although this is a matter for empirical

inquiry, the tendency has been to take their generalizability for granted and to go

on from there. (p. 560).

The question is, ultimately, not What can move Nicaragua into the global economy, but

rather, What is best for the Nicaraguan people? Ethnocentrically, one might assume

that globalization is the best path for the Nicaraguan people. But our humanizing selves

should be cautious about making that assumption. In suggesting policy, we do well to

respect the right to self-determination.


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