Day 1 - USP - São Paulo

Today we visited our first university - the publicly funded university USP, in São Paulo. The university has a total of 250 Undergraduate programmes, 224 postgraduate programmes and over 1,000 extra curricular programmes. There are 110,000 registered students at USP (which makes us feel a little small!) and 15,000 staff. The students are spread across 7 campuses throughout the state of São Paulo. USP has 4 museums, 4 hospitals, a velodrome, a 5,000 seater stadium, a rowing track, cinema and theatre (free to students!!). The majority of students travel each day to the campus. In total there are only 3,000-4,000 university beds on campus.

To put the size of this campus into some context, we were given a campus tour - by bus - which took a total of 45 minutes, without stopping! The university staff advised us that it takes over one hour to walk from one side of the campus to the other. One of the students we met today, described the university, as a "city within a city".

During the course of the day, we met a number of professors and academic staff from a range of faculties plus two students. All staff and students made us feel extremely welcome and were generous with their time. We shared information about the situation of higher education in the UK - the potential trebling of tuition fees caused a sharp intake of breath from our audience!!

Arthur and Alexandre - two exemplary ambassador students for USP.

We were hosted to lunch by the university in one of their restaurants on campus, where we were treated to typical Brazilian buffett lunch - and a magic show from the professor of maths and computing, who happened to be a magician!

The Magician

This was a fabulous first day on a lush, tropical campus, with people who met the Brazilian reputation for friendliness. We are looking forward to day two...