Brazil should be proud of their citizens and of their many accomplishments.

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Greece is great place. You should learn more about that beautiful people of Greece.

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That more are receiving postgrad degrees is good. But I would like to point out two fallacies that don´t help Brazil. Not fallacies in this good article but in the popular thinking.

First, a prevalent view held by many below the poverty line (o pobre lascado) is that Brazil is a rich country in natural resources; these resources are plundered and wasted; but if properly managed there would be enough for everyone to have a novela-style lifestyle without working very much if any.

Wrong. That might work for Nauru and Kuwait, but not for a country the size of Brazil.

The second misconception is just how much higher education can do for a country. It´s important, not a panecea. Nor did the article say it was. But many think it is.

Clive Crook wrote an article in the November Atlantic, A Matter of Degrees....Why college is not an economic cure-all.

It was not written about Brazil, but education transcends frontiers. Yes, a college grad will earn more. But those gains can´t be applied across a whole population. If an extra year of college equips students with skills that increase their productivity, giving everyone an extra year of college would raise everbody´s income. But if the extra year brought no gain in productive skills, but merely sorted people, signifying "higher ability" to prospective employers, then giving an extra year to everyone would raise no one´s income, since nobody´s position in the ordering would change.

"In 2004, 67% of American high school graduates went straight on to college, compared with just under half in 1972." This may not signal progress...since in the past failing to finish college did not mark people as unfit for good-paying jobs. But now it does. Lots of jobs that did not formerly require a degree now do require a college education. Like hotel managers, pre-school teachers, medical technicians, dental hygienists, cops, paralegals, librarians, software engineers.

"Shoving ever more people from high school to college is not only of dubious economic value, it is unlikely to serve the cause of intellectual enrichment if the new students are reluctant or disinclined." "The most valuable attribute for young people now entering the workforce is adaptability."

Finally, the article points out that 30 million adult Americans have trouble reading their mail or addressing an envelope, and three out of ten seniors in public hight schools still "fail to reach the basic literacy standard".

My comment is that if as we are told it takes about a 110 I.Q. to keep up in college, we do young people as a whole a disservice if we present university as the only way to suceed, and don´t have more alternate programs available. I know one agronomy school that keeps graduating kids by the dozens but most local ag operations don´t have a place for them so those that don´t go to work for the government or as bank ag loan experts end up driving taxis.

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