Don't you dare expect education

Unfortunately Flora Thomson-DeVeaux's text about studying at PUC in Rio shows how ridiculous it is how most of the private universities cope with the managament of their graduation courses. Going to college in Brazil might consume more of your patience than you can actually afford.  

Students pay to go to private colleges because the vacancies at the public colleges are limited and it’s really hard to succeed in the entrance examinations. 

The ones who can afford it, go to private institutions paying absurdly high fees to get horrible lectures where teachers often come to classes unprepared and don’t even know about the subject they are supposed to teach. Students attend their classes pretending to learn something from those teachers, who pretend to be teaching something, while the institution, collecting the fees, pretends to do a great academic job, advertising on bus stops how great they are. 

In Brazilian colleges teachers use the roll call as threatening weapon against their students, not considering the fact that their low level classes as well as their lack of academic and pedagogic skills make the students feel miserable and frustrated. They have their red pens and lists full of never-ending Brazilian names, where each note they make can cost the paying student a whole semester. 

I know from own experience that a first semester student most of the times is, in fact, extremely motivated and delighted about taking a graduation course. I also know from own experience how in the first two or three semesters the motivation gives place to complete frustration and disillusion. 

It seems to me that Brazil has not yet understood what Universities stand for. It’s not about counting the hours a student’s butt has sat on their chairs, to adulate the teachers ego and be profitable fo the institution. Academic work!  Thinking, creating theories, researching, real and profound studies! Exchange of ideas! None of these things happen in Brazil. 

Just wondering: Have you ever seen a Nobel Prize go to a Brazilian? People here are smart, they study, they are hardworking and unbelievably creative. How come they've never won a Nobel Prize? They don't get the chance! As long as the universities treat their students like retarded teenagers nothing will ever come out of it.  

The whole system in Brazil is wrong. The students are encouraged to shut up, sit on their chairs, listen to the teacher, pay the fees and wait for four or five years until they get their useless diploma. 

Every year more and more private faculties, universities and other types of courses emerge in the Brazilian Educational market. It’s business, not science. 

Shut up and pay the fee. 

Don’t you dare expect education!