I found Andre Simores’ talk very interesting. He talked about many facets of Brazil and its education system and gave me a good view of the country.
As a professor there, he provided an accurate description of the educational system found in Brazil. Compared to Brazil, American institutions of high education are much better funded and run. A large part of this was that many American Universities are private while most Brazilian counterparts are public.
The political institutions of Brazil are not as well developed as in the US with corruption plaguing many Brazilian politicians. This means that funding for higher education is not a priority for Brazil. Even in public universities in the US, fundraising is a huge priority with donors providing a significant portion of the money. Since Brazil doesn’t have this luxury, their institutions do not remain well funded.
Simores also focused on the economy in his talk. Brazil has a large agriculture industry like the US, but other parts of its economy are not as well developed. Countries like Brazil who are underdeveloped with rich resources really benefit from a well run and transparent government so their resources do not increase corruption and inequality. An example of this is Nigeria, since oil was discovered, the average Nigerian has actually gotten more poor since most of the profits from its natural resources have only gone to a small number of individuals.
For Brazil to have a better higher education system and more developed economy, the government needs to fundamentally change to become more democratic and more accountable.
Indeed, the “natural resource curse” – the paradox of simultaneously having too many natural resources and being poor, is investigated in the book “Why Nations Fail” by Acemoglu and Robinson.
One part of the answer as to why this is the case is that some countries, like the USA, develop institutions of inclusion. Whereas some countries, such as those in South America and Africa, develop institutions of exclusion. The history of the Brazilian economy is one of slavery and a class system, where huge groups of people were excluded from reaping the benefits of the growing economy.
When the Pilgrims and the French came to the northeastern US and Canada, they more or less had to trade with Native Americans at some point to survive. They could not really rely on slaves like their more southern counterparts. This set the scene for the kinds of inclusive democracy in New England that led to the making of the US constitution.