Brazil's budget cuts threaten more than 80,000 science scholarships

[Judi Lynn]

19 AUGUST 2019

If the country’s main science-funding agency doesn’t get more cash soon, young researchers will stop getting paid.
Rodrigo de Oliveira Andrade

Brazil’s main science-funding agency will have to suspend more than 80,000 scholarships to postdoctoral researchers and graduate and undergraduate students starting in September unless it receives additional cash from the government.

The National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) announced the impending cancellations on 15 August. CNPq also won’t be offering new scholarships, according to the statement. Brazil’s government hasn’t released the 330 million reais (US$89 million) that it froze in CNPq’s budget as part of broader spending cuts in March. If President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration doesn’t release some of the money soon, CNPq’s scholarship fund will run out of cash by next month.

“Government is jeopardizing the future of a whole generation of Brazilian scientists,” says Paulo Artaxo, a physicist at the University of São Paulo. Cancelling the scholarships will have a devastating impact on Brazilian science, which depends on these young researchers, he says.

Not supporting students in research programmes “is like shooting oneself in the foot”, says Alexander Turra, an oceanographer at the Oceanographic Institute of the University of São Paulo.

More:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02484-w

[Mike 03]

1. It's worth noticing how poorly dictators and scientists seem to get along these days,

at a time when science has never been more important.