São Paulo – Brazil’s Ministry of Education (MEC) has entries open to students from 60 developing countries interested in taking undergraduate courses, for free, in Brazil, starting next year. The list of nations included in the program has the Arab countries Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia. The registration period began on June 14 and runs until August 31, 2018.
The foreign students will study in Brazil via the program Programa de Estudantes – Convênio de Graduação (PEC-G), being executed by MEC’s Secretariat of Superior Education (SESu) and by the Cultural Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Itamaraty). There are 109 Brazilian universities willing to host the foreign students, nearly all of them public ones.
There are ten universities in the Midwest region, 23 in Northeast, eight in the North, 41 in the Southeast and 27 in the South (check out the list here). Among them, some of Brazil’s finest education institutions, such as the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and the University of São Paulo (USP).
The program was created within the country’s international educational cooperation initiatives, mainly with developing countries, based on bilateral agreements. It aims to enroll foreign students, so they can graduate and return to their countries at the end of the courses.
Each university in the program will inform, via MEC’s Integrated System (SIMEC), its available courses, the campus, the dates and the number of openings. These openings will be offered in the full-time or day-time periods and the students must begin the course here, they can’t just continue the courses they were taking in their home countries.
To qualify, the students must have turned 18 years old until December 31, 2018, have been born and live in the countries listed in the public notice, can’t have a temporary or permanent visa in Brazil, must have attended high school in full outside Brazil, have the Certificate of Proficiency in Portuguese for Foreigners (Celpe-Bras) and comply with the PEC-G norms.
Students also need to present a financial liability term, indicating they will have the needed USD 400 per month to cover living costs in Brazil during their studies.
Registrations must be done in the Brazilian embassy or diplomatic mission in the students’ home countries, where they will fill the application form and bring the required documents. The program will analyze school records and documents and take into account the grade point average and the correspondence of the high school with the undergraduate course.
In addition to the Arab countries aforementioned, also in the PEC-G list are South Africa, Angola, Cape Verde, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Kenya, Thailand, Argentina, Barbados, Chile, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela, among others.
The full public notice is here.
Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
