THE “BRAZIL COST” IN RESEARCH
As previously stated, UNICAMP has achieved continuous growth in its academic production. This is also true for other public universities in São Paulo and other states. The increase in scientific production is associated with the growth of postgraduate studies and the financing of research by government funding agencies, particularly in the State of São Paulo, where FAPESP provides large amounts of funding in a stable manner, through careful judgments by peers, made on the basis of scientific merit.
This reality could suggest that the situation at UNICAMP, as well as in other good public universities in our country – particularly the state universities in São Paulo – is not very different from good universities in more developed countries and that the main challenges have already been overcome. However, when we analyze our productivity indexes, we see that we are still far from the numbers of those universities, especially with regard to the impact of our publications.
What could be the reasons for this disparity? What would make our research difficult and compromise our performance? What problems concern the young researcher who carries out a productive post-doctoral internship abroad, upon his return to Brazil? It is known that a number of productive Brazilian post-doctors lose their luster when returning to their home institution. Some produce quality science only during periods spent abroad. It is also a fact that senior researchers often fear returning to Brazil despite tempting promises of lifelong employment at our best universities.
It is not difficult for a Brazilian researcher, with experience at good universities abroad, to list a series of problems, mostly of an administrative and infrastructure nature, that make our research activities difficult. They represent the equivalent of what is conventionally called, in companies, the “Brazil cost”. In this case, it concerns organizational difficulties, institutional culture and infrastructure.
The university is a relatively young institution in Brazil. This is true not only for UNICAMP, which was born in the 60s, but also for our oldest universities, where the ability to do science in a more widespread and systematic way has, with rare exceptions, a history of no more than thirty years. Still in their adolescence, therefore, our university institutions resent some choices they made regarding the form of government and which have already shown signs of inadequacy. The lack of a clear distribution of responsibilities, with the consequent excessive dilution of decision-making processes, a phenomenon known as “democratism”, associated with a certain corporatism, makes it difficult both to demand performance and to value merit in maintaining and replacing our staff. There are no precise limits regarding the requirements in relation to the obligations and skills expected of its employees. This creates a situation of “functional stagnation”. The end result is that academic productivity is much more related, at all levels, to individual initiatives and actions than to an institutional culture.
The lack of competent technical and administrative support turns teachers into a kind of wild card, who has to take care of tasks for which they are not prepared and which add nothing to their academic activity. Accountant for financial statements at the university and funding agencies, the professor is also a personnel administrator, mayor of campuses, manager of university hospitals and support sectors such as IT, audiovisual, libraries and vivariums.
In the teacher's day-to-day life, there are committees and committees that hold long meetings where the main result is to schedule the date of the next meeting and whose function could have been fulfilled by a competent technical-administrative or scientific or didactic support employee with the approval from a Head of Department or Director of an Institute.
In general, laboratory infrastructure is precarious mainly due to the unplanned growth of our institutions and the lack of adequate maintenance. As an example, we can mention inadequate electrical networks to support the demand for scientific equipment that, over time, piles up, becomes inefficient and has a shorter useful life, which implies great losses for the progress of experimental research. and waste of public resources. The long time spent importing consumable materials and equipment can represent a true pacemaker for our research.
Certainly, a timely, desired and feasible leap in quality will also depend on solving these infrastructure and, above all, organizational problems.
|