Capes has the highest budget in the last seven years: BRL 5.5 billion

The budget foreseen for the coffers of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes) should exceed R$ 5.5 billion. This is the highest share value in the last seven years.

This, according to a publication on the Terra website, is the investment level proposed in 2013 by the federal government, still under the command of Dilma Rousseff (PT).

The more than R$ 5 billion are just the initial endowment of the Lula government. It is expected that R$4.6 billion will be used to pay for scholarships, both inside and outside the country.

In addition, it is expected that the development areas will have an investment of around R$ 123 million. And the rest of the Capes budget is used in the journal publishing portal and also in administrative matters.

Scholarships

According to the president of Capes, Mercedes Bustamante, in an interview with Terra, there has been no priority in education guidelines in the last four years. However, the resumption of the new management allowed the portfolio to improve some aspects for students.

One of them – perhaps the most urgent, according to demand on social networks and in the press – was the readjustment scholarships for graduate studies, scientific initiation and education teacher training basic. This was the first adjustment to the value since 2013.

There was increase and 40% for Master's and Doctorate scholarships – from R$1,500 to R$2,100 and R$2,200 to R$3,100, respectively – and 27% for Post-Doctoral scholarships – from R$4,100 to R$5,200.

Capes also plans to increase the number of grant offers to the highest ever seen so far: 104,705 thousand grants.

Science Without Borders: when Capes had more budget

The year in which Capes had the most budget was 2015: R$7.41 billion. The value is due to the massive investment of the federal government in the program Science without borders, which guaranteed scholarships so that higher education students could take part in their training at universities in other countries.

However, in 2017 the program began to decrease in space in budget planning. If at its peak it had a contribution of BRL 1 billion, that year it had just under BRL 300 million.

Thus, Science Without Borders gradually disappeared, until it was no longer mentioned in the budget allocation – which happened in 2021.

Graduated in Social Communication at the Federal University of Goiás. Passionate about digital media, pop culture, technology, politics and psychoanalysis.