Last week, I attended the 200th meeting of the Deliberative Council of the Institute of Advanced Studies at USP. At the meeting, it was decided to honor the great academic leaders who have headed the Institute, which was founded in 1986 as an interdisciplinary forum for discussion and research on fundamental issues in science and culture.

The institute is dedicated to fostering initiatives that connect the university with the outside community, breaking down the barriers between different fields of knowledge, and bringing greater flexibility, innovation, and internationalization to the university.

In one way or another, this has been carried out by the IEA, in dialogue with schools and society. A Basic Education department was created, interdisciplinary topics have generated valuable research, and an important discussion about the future is underway, including the future of the University in Brazil.

But COVID-19 has led us to think more about the emergencies of the present than about the future. After all, no institution of higher education has emerged unscathed. Many private institutions have lost tuition revenue and other sources of income due to the economic crisis that accompanied the health crisis. In addition, learning—and even much of the research—has had to take place remotely. It is true that many public institutions were slow to prepare for this format, with some of their professors even arguing that it would be unacceptable to conduct the teaching process through technology.

However, once this paralyzing narrative was overcome by the facts and the realization that institutions could support students who lacked equipment or internet access, the process moved forward, benefiting, in part, from the internationalization of research that had already produced, over the past 20 years, online repositories of scientific articles and research reports across a wide range of fields.

USP experienced the same delays and initial uncertainties, which were quite understandable given the circumstances. But one thing remained constant at USP and at several public universities, and it fills us with pride: scientific research related to COVID-19 did not stop and, in many cases, continued in person. A survey conducted by USP’s Academic Information Management Agency (Aguia), based on data from Dimensions—a global platform providing information on research and scientific articles—shows that Brazil ranks 11th among the countries that have published the most studies on the disease, ahead of Japan, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

Of course, it wasn’t just universities that published research on COVID-19; Fiocruz and the Butantan Institute have done exceptional work, but USP, UNICAMP, and the Federal University of Paraná are among those that have contributed the most, despite the federal government’s cut to the import quota for research equipment and supplies. UNICAMP, for example, created a task force that helped standardize the RT-PCR diagnostic test and conduct testing in more than 100 municipalities.

At UFPR, researchers are using nanotechnology to develop a vaccine, working with bacteria that produce a polymer called polyhydroxybutyrate.

But one day the pandemic will end, and we will learn to live with the virus and its mutations. In-person classes will resume, and research—even in other fields—will be able to rely on face-to-face collaboration among scientists. The benefits are clear: greater human interaction among students, teachers, and researchers—not necessarily scheduled or structured—easier access to non-digitized books, and the opportunity to engage with artistic expressions and museums found on many college campuses.

However, the lessons learned from the crisis we experienced—which forced us to rethink our roles as teachers, students, and even researchers, with a heightened sense of urgency in the face of the challenges posed by the pandemic—should endure. After all, it was during crises that humanity innovated the most and broke paradigms that endured for centuries to come.

It is worth remembering that it was during the Great Influenza of 1918—mistakenly called the “Spanish Flu,” as John Barry shows in his book *The Great Flu*—that medical schools in the United States made the most significant strides, introducing teaching hospitals and research laboratories that fostered a much greater dialogue between theory and practice in this profession, which is so relevant to the times in which we live.

This time, the university as a whole will have the chance to rethink itself!

Last week, I attended the 200th meeting of the Deliberative Council of the Institute of Advanced Studies at USP. At the meeting, it was decided to honor the great academic leaders who have headed the Institute, which was founded in 1986 as an interdisciplinary forum for discussion and research on fundamental issues in science and culture.

The institute is dedicated to fostering initiatives that connect the university with the outside community, breaking down the barriers between different fields of knowledge, and bringing greater flexibility, innovation, and internationalization to the university.

In one way or another, this has been carried out by the IEA, in dialogue with schools and society. A Basic Education department was created, interdisciplinary topics have generated valuable research, and an important discussion about the future is underway, including the future of the University in Brazil.

But COVID-19 has led us to think more about the emergencies of the present than about the future. After all, no institution of higher education has emerged unscathed. Many private institutions have lost tuition revenue and other sources of income due to the economic crisis that accompanied the health crisis. In addition, learning—and even much of the research—has had to take place remotely. It is true that many public institutions were slow to prepare for this format, with some of their professors even arguing that it would be unacceptable to conduct the teaching process through technology.

However, once this paralyzing narrative was overcome by the facts and the realization that institutions could support students who lacked equipment or internet access, the process moved forward, benefiting, in part, from the internationalization of research that had already produced, over the past 20 years, online repositories of scientific articles and research reports across a wide range of fields.

USP experienced the same delays and initial uncertainties, which were quite understandable given the circumstances. But one thing remained constant at USP and at several public universities, and it fills us with pride: scientific research related to COVID-19 did not stop and, in many cases, continued in person. A survey conducted by USP’s Academic Information Management Agency (Aguia), based on data from Dimensions—a global platform providing information on research and scientific articles—shows that Brazil ranks 11th among the countries that have published the most studies on the disease, ahead of Japan, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

Of course, it wasn’t just universities that published research on COVID-19; Fiocruz and the Butantan Institute have done exceptional work, but USP, UNICAMP, and the Federal University of Paraná are among those that have contributed the most, despite the federal government’s cut to the import quota for research equipment and supplies. UNICAMP, for example, created a task force that helped standardize the RT-PCR diagnostic test and conduct testing in more than 100 municipalities.

At UFPR, researchers are using nanotechnology to develop a vaccine, working with bacteria that produce a polymer called polyhydroxybutyrate.

But one day the pandemic will end, and we will learn to live with the virus and its mutations. In-person classes will resume, and research—even in other fields—will be able to rely on face-to-face collaboration among scientists. The benefits are clear: greater human interaction among students, teachers, and researchers—not necessarily scheduled or structured—easier access to non-digitized books, and the opportunity to engage with artistic expressions and museums found on many college campuses.

However, the lessons learned from the crisis we experienced—which forced us to rethink our roles as teachers, students, and even researchers, with a heightened sense of urgency in the face of the challenges posed by the pandemic—should endure. After all, it was during crises that humanity innovated the most and broke paradigms that endured for centuries to come.

It is worth remembering that it was during the Great Influenza of 1918—mistakenly called the “Spanish Flu,” as John Barry shows in his book *The Great Flu*—that medical schools in the United States made the most significant strides, introducing teaching hospitals and research laboratories that fostered a much greater dialogue between theory and practice in this profession, which is so relevant to the times in which we live.

This time, the university as a whole will have the chance to rethink itself!

*Claudia Costin is the director of the Center for Educational Policy at FGV and a former director of education at the World Bank.

 

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