Similarities bring U.S., Brazilian colleges together
By MATTHEW DEMBICKI, Published November 11, 2008

AUSTIN, Texas — The U.S. and Brazil may be in opposite hemispheres, but similarities in their histories, cultures, economies and aspirations have brought together a group of community and technical colleges from both countries.

This year, five community colleges from across the U.S. paired with 10 technical colleges from across Brazil to exchange ideas on topics ranging from access to education to workforce education for a global economy. The U.S. colleges included Alamo Community College (ACC) and Houston Community College (HCC) in Texas, Macomb Community College (MCC) in Michigan, Northern Virginia Community College and San Diego Miramar Community College (California).

In June, leaders from the Brazilian system came to the U.S. to start a dialogue about common trends and possible solutions to address critical areas, such as shortages of skilled workers. In September, a team of community college leaders visited Brazil to see firsthand how its technical college system operates.

A dilemma facing both countries is providing an affordable education to help low-skill, poorly educated people attain well-paying jobs, which in turn fuels economies. In both countries, underserved students must overcome financial, academic and cultural barriers to succeed, according to a summary description of the international initiative.

“While the U.S. has a tradition of open access, we face new challenges driven by high dropout rates, underprepared students and increasing costs. Brazil has the challenge of competing in a global market with the average worker having six years of schooling,” the report said.

Advocates for the initiative say sharing ideas and visiting each other’s colleges can foster ideas. For example, Brazil recently found new oil reserves off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. So it seemed logical to pair the local technical college with Houston Community College (Texas), which has an institute developed to provide energy training programs, including petroleum.

Representatives of the Brazil/U.S. Partnership to Strengthen Vocational and Technical Education gave an overview of the initiative at the annual National Council for Workforce Education (NCWE) conference here last month. The partnering colleges say the initiative could prompt new areas of focus for the institutions.

Vicente Ferreira de Lucena Jr. of Paraiba Federal Center for Technical Education noted that his technical college is on an island in the rural Amazon rainforest. The next largest city is about 500 miles away. The government created the college to help foster new industries in an area desperate for jobs, Lucena said. It even offered tax breaks for companies to locate there.

Today, the college trains workers to build motorcycles and electronic home devices for companies such as Honda and Philips, Lucena said.

Kristin Stehouwer, MCC’s vice provost for arts and sciences, noted her college and its Brazilian partners are near some of the largest freshwater sources in the world. Although community colleges typically aren’t involved in research, Stehouwer said MCC is interested in studying freshwater issues and could partner on the endeavor with the Brazilian colleges.

The institutions had various strong points that their partners wanted to explore further. The Brazilian colleges were particularly interested in remedial education and in programs that address such issues, such as Achieving the Dream, said Federico Zaragoza, vice chancellor at ACC. They also wanted to learn more how U.S. colleges updated and aligned their curricula with industry needs, he said.  

Meanwhile, U.S. community colleges want to focus on Brazil’s strong service-learning component. One project had students collecting plastic bags and molding them into building blocks that were used to build homes for the homeless. U.S. colleges were also impressed with how the Brazilian system accelerated its use of distance education.

At the conference, the presenters were asked how their colleges could justify working with foreign colleges and traveling abroad in tight economic times. Donald Ritzenhein, provost and chief learning officer at MCC, said colleges such as his—which serves a blue-collar county that’s facing declining jobs—must learn to help prepare students to think globally. Colleges have typically limited their international education programs to language and liberal arts students, but technical education students must also become familiar with global issues and how to work in various countries and cultures in order to land good-paying jobs, he said.

“It’s a strategic necessity,” said Mary Gershwin, a consultant with the initiative. “It’s a global economy and everyone else is faced with similar challenges.”

Other countries are not waiting to partner. When the U.S. contingent was in Rio de Janeiro, more than three dozen instructors from Angola arrived to learn how to train their poorest populations for jobs in Angola’s emerging oil industry.

NCWE will soon publish a best-practices summary from each of the participating colleges and possible next steps. That will likely include an exchange of students and instructors.

“We hope we are paving the way to build other partnerships in both countries,” Stehouwer said.

The initiative is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Embassy in Brazil and the Ford Motor Co. It is supported by Higher Education for Development and the American Association of Community Colleges.