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The regulation of Graduate Programs in Brazil is less than five decades old. Along this period, the system has been successful concerning its results, even though some of its essential features remain unfinished. In the field of Psychology, the system comprises 64 Programs and 42 of them offer Doctoral degrees. In order to efficiently cope the demands of the Brazilian Graduate System, the Psychology area will need to face challenges, some of which we highlight in this paper. They are: (a) the enlargement of geographical and thematic scope in order to overcome regional asymmetries and thematic gaps in psychological research; (b) the improvement of the evaluation system in order to comprise the diverse strategies in instructing new researchers and the knowledge production in every subarea of Psychology; (c) the necessity of a link among different areas of Graduate Programs in Psychology since the basis for knowledge production in this field may have additional demands related to the development of intervention technologies; and (d) the elaboration of policies which may qualify the system, improving the research networks, providing international exchange for the groups, promoting scientific publications, and extensive methodological learning, for instance. The diagnosis of these and other challenges, in their multiple dimensions, may lead to a more efficient use of the potentials of Brazilian research groups, towards the development of knowledge production and training new researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brazilian Institutions of Higher Education were conceived in Brazil in the 19th century as centers of professional training which offered undergraduate programs giving little attention to research. A systematic research training started in 1951 with the creation of CAPES, an agency of the Ministry of Education for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, and it improved when the agency was restructured in 1964. The Graduate Programs in Psychology implemented between 1965 and 1980 faced insertion difficulties in their institutions and had problems to present a profile which was consistent with the training of researchers and higher education faculty. Nevertheless, they made important contributions to doctorate training and research in Brazil. The current characteristics, designed in the 1980s, were incorporated by the new programs, among them, the Graduate Program in Psychology from the Federal University of Rio Grande Sul (UFRGS). This paper presents some considerations about the founding conditions and the fundamentals that are associated with the successful trajectory of the Graduate Program in Psychology from UFRGS and it describes the history of its foundation, its main principles and the way it is organized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]