Science and postgraduate education across Brazil: an interactive map
5 November 2026 · Nathan Damas Antonio
Where are postgraduate degrees, scholarships and programmes concentrated in Brazil? National totals help track the system over time, while their geographical distribution adds another dimension to the analysis. To explore that relationship, I have added an interactive map to the website’s Lab.
Science and postgraduate education in Brazil presents nine cards in English and Portuguese. The story brings together time series on federal investment, GDP share, scholarships abroad, programmes, enrolments and degrees awarded, alongside a visualization of all 27 federative units and five regions.
Explore the science and postgraduate education map →
What the map shows¶
Four indicators are available: doctoral graduates, master’s graduates, CAPES scholarships and postgraduate programmes. The controls let you change the year, switch between states and regions, select a territory and zoom in. Hovering over or selecting an area reveals its rate, absolute count and the population used in the calculation.
Colours compare each territory’s rate with Brazil’s average in the same year. This helps distinguish the absolute size of the system from its scale relative to population.
In the dataset used here, Brazil recorded 12.8 doctoral graduates per 100,000 inhabitants in 2024, using the 2022 Census population. State-level rates range from 1.2 in Amapá to 27.9 in the Federal District. Paraná recorded 1,913 graduates, equivalent to 16.7 per 100,000 inhabitants. These figures describe the distribution of degrees awarded; on their own, they do not measure programme quality or explain territorial differences.
Reading the rates¶
Degrees and scholarships are expressed per 100,000 inhabitants; programmes are expressed per million. The denominator is the fixed 2022 Census population for every year. Changes over time therefore reflect changes in the indicators against a common population baseline, rather than rates calculated with each year’s estimated population.
Location refers to the programme’s or institution’s state, not students’ places of origin. Available years are selected observations included in the reference publication: an absent year does not mean zero. This version supports state and regional exploration.
Sources, attribution and reproducibility¶
The adaptation uses derived data from Ciência e pós-graduação no Brasil, governo a governo, by Alexandre Ribeiro Cajazeira Ramos, with a snapshot dated 16 October 2026 and sources from MCTI, CAPES and IBGE. The data retain their CC BY 4.0 license and attribution; the new interface and preparation scripts are licensed under MIT.
The source author’s correction swapping graduate counts for Amazonas and Amapá is retained and documented. I checked fidelity to the reference publication, regional sums and recalculated rates. These checks do not constitute an independent audit of the agencies’ primary files.
The map includes an accessible table and CSV, JSON and GeoJSON downloads. The methods and reproduction instructions describe extraction and validation. The aim is to accompany each geographical reading with the numbers and methodological choices that support it.
Open the map and select a state or explore the story from the beginning.