Higher Education, South-South Cooperation and Brazilian Foreign Policy: Analyzing the Programa Estudante-Convênio de Graduação (PEC-G)

Abstract

Higher Education is one of the major sectors in International Cooperation for Development (ICD) within the Brazilian Foreign Policy (BFP). The Undergraduate Student-Agreement Program (PEC-G), institutionalized in the 1960s and aimed at providing students from developing countries with the opportunity to graduate at Brazilian universities, refers to an important initiative in this sector. The article´s objective is to portray PEC-G in the light of Brazilian South-South Cooperation (SSC). For such, it presents a dialog among the Program’s regulation, its current characteristics, the historical patterns of BFP and SSC assumptions. BFP history demonstrate that the Decree which instituted PEC-G has turned out to be a control policy. Despite its rise to a cooperative approach, the excess of conditionings imposed to the participants, added to the giver’s sovereignty in establishing the Program’s agenda, end up distancing PEC-G from the Brazilian official discourse on SSC, raising questions about this discourse.