Queensland as a privileged partner for the internationalization of Brazilian HEIs

Studies on the internationalization of higher education in Australia tend to focus on the country’s two largest states, New South Wales and Victoria, which are home to the cities of Sydney and Melbourne. These two states encompass a plurality of Australian universities and host the country’s most culturally diverse populations. However, we point out opportunities outside of this axis, more particularly those offered by the state of Queensland, which has ten universities and a large number of educational institutions, most of them in its densely populated coastal cities in the Southeast. As we will discuss later, Brazilian students in Australia are disproportionately concentrated in the state of Queensland, so bilateral cooperation initiatives cannot ignore this region.

International enrollments in this state are less concentrated than elsewhere. Table 1 shows the proportional representation of each nationality in the enrollments of international students from New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and Australia in 2020. It is important to note that Brazil and Colombia, the only non-Asian nationalities in the ranking, are notably more represented in Queensland than in other states.

Table 1 – Participation in enrollments in each state by nationality in 2020, as a percentage

Nationality	NSW	VIC	QLD	Australia
China	27	26	22	26
India	11	24	14	17
Nepal	13	4	5	8
Brazil	5	1	8	4
Colombia	3	4	6	4
Vietnam	3	4	2	3
Malaysia	2	4	2	3
Philippines	3	3	4	3
South Korea	3	2	5	3
Thailand	4	2	2	3
Others	26	25	32	27
Total	100	100	100	100

Source: Departament of Education, Skills and Employment (Dese 2021b)

Considering these trends, we argue that the state of Queensland should be seen as a potential leader in promoting initiatives for cooperation in higher education between Brazil and Australia.

Griffith University

The cooperation opportunities identified here come from the management practices implemented and planned by Griffith University, an Australian public higher education institution. Griffith University is the largest university in terms of direct enrollment of Brazilian students and has 50,000 students, with interconnected campuses in the region.

Despite the strong Latin American presence in the region, Griffith University traditionally positions itself in the context of Southeast Asia. In this sense, it is no different from most Australian universities. The CIE-LAWG report (2018) states that one of the barriers to mutual internationalization of higher education between Australia and Brazil has been the reluctance of Australian HEIs to prioritize Latin America in their strategies because “many institutions do not have the necessary resources to prioritize multiple regions and focus on the Indo-Pacific” (39).

The demographics of Griffith University students point to Latin America as a significant potential partner. The university’s cultural diversity is indicated by the fact that English is the home language of only 67% of the student body (including “Australian” domestic students). The top five home languages (besides English) are all Asian, but also include Spanish, Arabic, Afrikaans, French, and Portuguese. The Spanish-speaking cohort is almost entirely South American, and 86% of Portuguese speakers are from Brazil. These statistics reinforce the clear importance of Latin America for the university’s growth. However, it is important that this relationship be established as a bidirectional exchange, and not through a transactional or “money-focused” lens.

Cooperation opportunities

We identified four structures for cooperation and bilateral integration between Brazilian and Australian higher education. While the first opportunity originates from preliminary research project findings on Brazilians in Australia conducted at Griffith University, the others are derived from models currently in place at the institution.

International student flows

Since the early 2000s, Australia has become one of the preferred destinations for Brazilian international students. From the Australian perspective, Brazilians are the primary non-Asian group of onshore international students. In 2020, Brazil was the fifth-largest source of international students in Australia in terms of student numbers (Dese 2021a) and the fourth-largest source in terms of international enrollments (Dese 2021b).

Brazilian students are geographically concentrated in a few locations in Australia. They are a unique demographic group, as proportionally, they tend to reside more in Queensland than students from other countries — particularly in Brisbane, Gold Coast, and Sunshine Coast. While only 15% of all international student enrollments in 2020 occurred in Queensland, 30% of total Brazilian enrollments occurred in this state. In the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, Brazil represents the primary source of international student enrollments, with even higher numbers than China, India, and Nepal (Dese 2021b).

However, a deeper analysis reveals a paradoxical situation: despite the substantial increase in their numbers, Brazilian students are generally outside the Australian higher education system. In 2020, only 6% of Brazilian enrollments occurred in HEIs, while ELICOS and EFP represented 93% of enrollments. Based on this data, we can argue that, along with Colombians, Brazilian students are the most underrepresented cohort on Australian university campuses.

Research conducted at Griffith University explores the underlying reasons and consequences of this paradox. The significant number of Brazilian students in Australia represents an opportunity. And the fact that they are often outside of higher education indicates that they are overlooked by institutions and policymakers in both countries.

The reasons why Brazilian students are not integrated into higher education are poorly understood; however, our research points to socioeconomic disparities between the countries. Most Brazilian students decide to enroll in the ELICOS sector due to the costs associated with this decision. Higher fees associated with higher education are often listed as determining factors in enrollment decisions, along with the lack of scholarships funded by Australia and Brazil.

Improving the participation of Brazilian students in the higher education sector would also improve the living conditions of Brazilian migrants in Australia, allowing them to progress in careers started in Brazil and reducing the downward social mobility associated with Latin American migration in the country.

Interdisciplinary and interinstitutional organizations

Some models contribute to Griffith University’s integration with Brazil and can be used as strategies in this path. This involves the participation of academics and research centers in international and interinstitutional interdisciplinary organizations focused on Latin America or whose scope encompasses both regions.

An example of such an organization, based at Griffith University, is the Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia (AILASA). AILASA is Australia’s leading professional organization for research and engagement in Social Sciences and Humanities. It seeks to develop a strategic focus on research capacity areas in Australia and New Zealand. It also provides a network organization model through which knowledge and connections can be expanded across various institutions, with individuals rather than universities as its members, to enable scalability in research teams.

AILASA has a rotating leadership model, moving from one university to another in New Zealand and Australia every two or four years. With over three decades of existence, the organization offers a model of expertise network and resilience, particularly important because academic knowledge about Latin America in Australia is diffuse and low in concentration in a single institution. Interinstitutional collaboration, in turn, reduces the risk of costly collaborations dependent on one or a few key individuals.

Activities focus on seminars, conferences, skills development workshops, and guidance for early-career researchers. It works with government representatives, industry partners, and community organizations. These connections with other universities are crucial for developing future expertise in knowledge about Latin America but cannot be captured through institutionally-led initiatives focusing on research revenues, metrics, and co-authored publications.

Institutional partnerships

This relates to the establishment of formal partnerships between HEIs, often created through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between universities with a similar profile or where niche study areas or research interests overlap. Griffith University has several memoranda of understanding with universities in Latin America. And it is not alone: many Australian universities seek such agreements, facilitated by networks of connections between universities in the country like the “Group of Eight,” the “Regional Universities Network,” the “Australian Technology University Network,” and the “Innovative Research Universities Network.” According to the CIE-LAWG report, in 2018, formal agreements between Australian and Brazilian universities represented 26% of the total agreements in force with Latin American institutions.

An MoU can be just a means of increasing student mobility in specific areas of learning, potentially becoming victims of the “transactional mindset” of student recruitment. Broader MoUs encompass commitments in curriculum development, collaborative learning (online), staff and doctoral student exchange, co-hosting conferences, joint publications, and grant applications. However, the success of such initiatives often depends on the ongoing commitment of only one or two individuals in each institution. Institutions also risk signing too many MoUs, exceeding the resources available for their effective maintenance, which poses a problem given the enormous geographical distance between Australia and Brazil.

Griffith University has environmental sciences as its main area of cooperation with Brazil. Which is not surprising. After all, it was the first Australian university to create an interdisciplinary school of environmental sciences with a degree in the field from 1971. The university also hosts the Australian Rivers Institute, the world’s top water security research institute, according to the 2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index report (McGann, 2021). The Brazilian government’s Capes PrInt program for the internationalization of higher education generated motivation and opportunity for greater connection of Griffith University with Brazilian universities, in water research.

Academic peer cooperation

There is still academic cooperation among peers not necessarily through institutional connections. In the field of Social Sciences and Humanities, such connections often result from academic conferences or collaboration on co-authored articles. In universities in general, this tends to occur in highly specialized areas among institutions whose academics share an equally distinctive international profile. In the case of Griffith, this occurs in areas such as aviation management, environmental sciences, tourism, and heritage, where the university has a significant global reputation and a differential.

These collaborations aim to produce co-authored publications and targeted scholarships but lack the institutional infrastructure to remain sustainable if scholarships are lacking. They may not be aligned with students’ growth areas; furthermore, any reciprocity also depends heavily on the ongoing support of individual academics. Previously, universities’ efforts to collect institutional data on academic peer cooperation were ad hoc initiatives or faced various practical challenges due to the huge number of such international exchanges. This has recently changed, and all Australian universities are required to maintain a record of partnerships with foreign institutions to comply with the Australian Foreign Relations Act and the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, respectively. This tends to facilitate the identification of partnerships in this field as well.

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