President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva today signed complementary acts to the Education Development Plan (‘PDE’), which had been launched earlier in April by the Federal Government. The Education Development Plan contains a set of measures – bills, decrees and other instruments that create two new universities, regulate the emoluments for overtime work for federal university and university hospital professors of medicine and staff, broaden the support Programmes for School Transport, National School Meals, and Direct Investment in Schools and strengthen the National IT Programme in Education (‘ProInfo’) aimed at supplying computers to all state schools in Brazil by 2010. The total ‘PDE’ investment is of 1.2 billions of reais [circa 345 million pounds sterling] over the next three years.

Within the PDE initiative, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the Minister for Education, Fernando Haddad, have formally signed the Bill that creates the Federal University of Latin-American Integration, UNILA, headquartered in Foz do Iguaçu in the State of Paraná. The objectives of the new university are to pursue inter-regional trans-disciplinary research and teaching the areas of joint interest of the MERCOSUL member countries focusing, for example, upon use of natural resources, trans-border biodiversity, social sciences and linguistic research, international relations as well as relevant disciplines for strategic development. 10 thousand students will be able to benefit from undergraduate and post-graduate education leading to MA and PhD degrees.

The UNILA campus will be located in the city of Foz do Iguaçu (PR), on a 43-hectare site assigned [granted] by the Itaipu Binational. The Bill that creates the University includes the creation of various new higher education lecturer and administrative posts. 500 teaching jobs will be distributed amongst the professionals from MERCOSUL member countries: 250 of which will be permanent posts (tenured) and 250 temporary lectureships (visiting lecturers/professors). In addition, it creates the posts of Rector and Deputy Rector within the Ministry of Education system. It is expected that the Bill will become law in 2008 paving the way for UNILA to welcome its first entrants in the academic year of 2009.

Entrants will have to sit a university entry examination that will be offered in two versions: one with a Portuguese language requirement for Brazilian citizens and a Spanish Language for the foreign candidates of eligible member countries. A change in the examination will require knowledge of Latin American literature and history in lieu of the Brazilian literature and history alone, as it has been traditional at all other federal universities in Brazil. Lectures will be offered in both Portuguese and Spanish, as half of the teaching staff will be from the regional member countries. UNILA will become part of the ‘MERCOSUL Higher Education Regional Space’, currently under development, following its launch at 2006 MERCOSUL Ministerial Meeting on Education under the aegis of the Brazilian Presidency. It is expected that UNILA will be fully operational in four years’ time with an estimated yearly budget of 135.9 million reais [circa 40 million pounds sterling].

The Mercosul Institute of Advanced Studies (‘IMEA’) will launch its activities at the beginning of 2008 at the Itaipu Technology Park (‘PTI’).

Professor Hélgio Trindade, former Rector of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, was tasked with the UNILA Project Co-ordination.

Source: Office of the President and Embassy of Brazil in London