The dominant factors for the internationalization of scholars in social sciences graduate programs in Brazil

Abstract

In the last two decades, graduate programs in social science grew in number, while funding agencies began to push for its ‘internationalization’. This process is highly contradictious, and scholarship demonstrates how difficult it is to internationalize programs in the Humanities’ area. The present study discuss the main explaining factors behind the internationalization of scholars in social sciences. It analyzes a national on-line survey to describe the main aspects related to the internationalization of scholars careers and identify its dominant causes. The main results are the following: doing a post-doc abroad is more important to internationalization than studying for a short-time period during PhD period; The area of anthropology is more internationalized than sociology and political science, though it is not clear which are the causes for this result; professors in peripheral programs employ a low-cost approach to compensate for the lack of internationalization

Key-words:
Academic internationalization; Graduate studies in Brazil; Social science