Student loans in Brazil: which loans international students can actually access

How a loan fits a study-in-Brazil budget

A loan should supplement, not replace, your overall funding plan. It is intended to cover any remaining costs after accounting for savings, family support, scholarships, and part-time earnings. The amount needed will vary by programme and location. Public universities do not charge tuition, teach in Portuguese, and admit students through national exams. Private institutions, which offer most English-taught business programmes, charge the same tuition rate for all students. Cities like Belo Horizonte, where SKEMA operates its Belo Horizonte campus, have lower living costs, reducing the amount you may need to borrow compared to São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. Calculate your total expenses and identify any shortfall before seeking financing, as this gap, not the listed tuition, determines your funding needs.

The two scenarios behind this search

Most online results for "student loans Brazil" answer a different question from the one an incoming student is asking, so separate the two cases before reading any lender's page.

This guide is about Scenario A. The Scenario B options that fill the search results, including the international lenders, do not apply to a degree taken in Brazil, a point worth holding onto before you compare any product.

How student financing works in Brazil

Brazil's state-backed scheme is the Fundo de Financiamento Estudantil, known as FIES, a public programme created in 2001 to widen access to higher education. FIES is a government student loan that charges zero interest and is means-tested: it is open to students whose gross monthly household income per capita does not exceed three times the minimum wage, with a FIES Social track reserving half its places for the lowest-income candidates registered in the federal CadÚnico system. For the 2026 academic year, the programme funds roughly 112,000 places across two intakes. A parallel scheme, P-FIES, channels private-bank capital instead of public money, so its rates vary by lender instead of sitting at zero.

The eligibility rules shut out incoming international students at every step. Entry requires a minimum score on the national ENEM exam, which non-residents cannot sit; the means test relies on a Brazilian tax file and local household income; registration runs through a verified domestic gov.br account that foreign passport holders generally cannot open; and the funded courses are Portuguese-taught undergraduate degrees. State-backed financing is reserved for Brazilian nationals and for permanent residents admitted through specific, fully funded bilateral agreements such as the PEC-G and PEC-PG programmes. If you are arriving from abroad to study, treat FIES and P-FIES as closed.

Can a foreign student access a loan in Brazil? The eligibility realities

With the state route closed, the next door is private educational credit, the crédito educativo offered by fintech lenders such as Pravaler and by commercial banks through products like the Bradesco Universitário account and Itaú's student credit line. On paper, these are open to anyone enrolled; in practice, their underwriting is built around a resident applicant.

Pravaler, the largest specialist, splits tuition into extended monthly instalments from around 0.89% a month, adjusted each year by the IPCA inflation index. It accepts a migrant's CRNM or RNE card as identification, but it then requires a Brazilian guarantor. A fiador is a co-signer who must be a Brazilian citizen or permanent resident with a clean credit record at Serasa, the national credit bureau, and who must prove a monthly income worth at least twice the full monthly tuition instalment. Accepted proof is local: a Brazilian payslip, local bank statements or a Brazilian tax return. Commercial banks ask for the same building blocks: an active local account, a CPF, a domestic credit score, and a resident co-signer.

Two structural barriers therefore stand in the way of an incoming student, on top of the visa and registration steps every international student completes. The first is the guarantor: few applicants arriving from abroad have a relative who is a Brazilian tax resident and willing to accept legal liability for the debt. The second is the absence of a local credit history. Without a record at Serasa, a Brazilian bank will not approve an overdraft, a credit card, or a personal loan, no matter your profile at home. For the great majority of international students, private credit inside Brazil is not a realistic source of funding.

The realistic financing routes for an incoming international student

The route that actually works is not a loan at all. Brazilian private universities bill tuition as a monthly fee, the mensalidade, not as an upfront annual or semester payment. The academic year splits into two semesters, with tuition paid in six monthly instalments. A mensalidade is a standard monthly tuition payment that carries no interest when paid by the due date, needs no co-signer and triggers no Serasa check; the only administrative requirement is a CPF tax number, which the school uses to generate each boleto, the standard Brazilian payment slip. For an international student, this turns a large annual fee into a manageable monthly outgoing that can be met from home-country resources without touching the high-cost Brazilian credit market.

Around that spine, an incoming student builds funding from sources that do not depend on Brazilian residency:

• Home-country savings and family support, converted as needed, remain the foundation for most international students.
• A loan taken in your own country, where you have a credit history and a guarantor, not in Brazil.
• Institutional scholarships, which reduce the fee a loan or instalment plan has to cover.
• Part-time work or an on-campus assistantship, which the student visa permits once the employment contract is registered, to offset living costs.

UK and other home-country loans: do they fund a degree in Brazil?

For the anglophone audience, the honest answer from the two largest systems is no.

In the United Kingdom, Student Finance England, and its equivalents in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, fund tuition and maintenance only for students at registered UK institutions. They will not fund a full undergraduate or postgraduate degree taken entirely abroad. Maintenance support is available only where an approved study-abroad term is an integrated part of a UK degree. The Turing Scheme does not change this: it is a mobility grant for students registered at UK institutions, covering placements and exchanges, not a complete degree taken in Brazil.

In the United States, federal Title IV loans can in principle be used at eligible foreign schools that hold an active Federal School Code, but Brazilian higher education institutions are generally not registered under the programme, so US federal loans do not fund a full degree in Brazil. Graduate PLUS loans are in any case being phased out for new foreign-enrolled borrowers from 1 July 2026. US private lenders such as Sallie Mae and Earnest lend only where the foreign institution is certified by the lender, and the applicant has a creditworthy US co-signer- conditions Brazilian private business schools do not meet. American students, like British ones, fund a Brazilian degree through personal resources, not the standard loan systems.

What about international student lenders?

Prodigy Finance and MPOWER Financing dominate "international student loan" searches because they assess future earning potential rather than collateral or a local co-signer. Neither funds a degree taken in Brazil.

Prodigy funds postgraduate students at partner schools across 19 destination countries, none of them Brazil, at variable rates that have run above 10%, and it has tightened the nationalities it accepts for the 2026 intake. MPOWER lends only for institutions in the United States and Canada. Both serve Scenario B, a student leaving Brazil, not one arriving. Treat their pages as out of scope for a Brazilian degree.

Financing an MBA or graduate programme

Postgraduate financing follows the same logic but with one extra lever. The interest-free instalment plan and home-country funding still apply, and the international lenders still exclude Brazil. What changes is employer sponsorship: for executive and specialised master's candidates, particularly those already in work, a company funding or subsidising the degree is common, and Brazil's large corporate sector makes it a realistic route for a part-time or executive programme. A SKEMA candidate weighing the Two-Year MSc can combine sponsorship, where it is available, with the monthly fee structure instead of relying on a loan.

If you are Brazilian and planning to study abroad

If you reached this guide as a Brazilian national looking to fund a degree overseas, your options are wider than those for an incoming student. The specialist international lenders that exclude study in Brazil do support Brazilians accepted onto accredited programmes abroad, assessing the loan against future earnings in a hard-currency market, and a developed network of Brazilian philanthropic foundations awards merit scholarships to nationals heading to leading universities worldwide. That is a different funding question from the one this guide answers, and it turns on the destination country's rules rather than Brazil's.

Scholarships and non-loan alternatives to check first

Because local borrowing is effectively closed and Brazilian credit is expensive, the practical plan reduces how much you need to borrow. Private business schools commonly offer institutional and merit scholarships that lower the fee before any financing question arises. The student visa permits part-time work once the contract is registered, and many schools offer on-campus assistantships that pay a stipend or a tuition discount. For most students, the strongest plan is a hybrid one: home-country savings as the base, a scholarship to cut the fee, the interest-free monthly instalment to spread what remains, and part-time earnings or an assistantship to cover living costs. SKEMA's own financial support sits inside this logic as a safety net rather than a primary source, combining merit-based excellence awards with emergency assistance for students who hit sudden hardship, conditional on maintaining a grade point average of at least 2.3 out of 4, the equivalent of 13 out of 20.

The cost of borrowing in Brazil, if you ever consider it

Two figures explain why borrowing locally is a last resort. The benchmark Selic interest rate stood at 14.25% a year in June 2026, and consumer credit sits far above it, with credit-card and personal-loan rates that often run between 30 and 100% a year. Currency adds a second risk. With the real at roughly R$5.15 to the US dollar, R$5.90 to the euro and around R$6.80 to the pound in mid-2026, a student funded in a strong currency gains purchasing power, but anyone who borrows in one currency and later earns in another faces a mismatch if the real moves. That's why the interest-free instalment, paid from home-country funds, beats any Brazilian loan on cost.

SKEMA in Belo Horizonte: a worked example

SKEMA runs a private, English-taught model on Brazilian soil from Belo Horizonte, a city at the lower end of the national cost range. At undergraduate level, a student can take the Global Business specialisation there, part of a four-year Global BBA with published tuition of 14,000 euros a year plus a 500 euro annual service fee. Paid as a monthly instalment, that is close to 1,170 euros a month across the year, with no interest, instead of a single upfront bill. At postgraduate level, the two-year MSc is published at 38,000 euros for the programme, again with a 500 euro annual service fee and a 100 euro application fee, and its multi-campus structure lets a student complete part of the degree in France, where French awards such as the Eiffel scholarship come into play.

The practical move is to confirm the fee in force and the awards attached to your specific programme with the admissions team, fold the visa, registration and insurance costs into your plan from the start, and arrange any home-country financing before you enrol. SKEMA's support for international students covers the visa, banking and arrival steps alongside the academic ones, and once your funding plan is settled, you can begin your application.