A metamorfose do trabalho docente no ensino superior : entre o público e o mercantil

Abstract

The focus of this thesis lies on higher education teachers work in Brazil in the face of the current context of social relations of production under the aegis of financial capital, its implications in the production field, and its effects upon the country s neoliberalistic policies. The study is based upon two propositions that are fundamental for the comprehension of the mutations in teacher s work: simple labour and wage labour. Based on historical materialism, it examines the metamorphosis of the docent workforce into merchandise and apprehends a tendency of simplification of this work with implications upon salary, working conditions, and professor s qualifications. These are reflections of different types of public/private combinations that are leading to growing privatization of universities and thus, to an increase in productive teachers work for capital. Following orientations of international organs, the Brazilian administrations have been delegating responsibilities of financing and providing higher education to the private sector, by means of different privatization strategies in the public sector, amplifying capital s scope of action. On the other hand, since globalization of capital in the service sector functions by means of agreements between its productive and financial dimensions, large corporate education groups seek the self-valorization of capital in the financial system, using these enterprises as ballasts. Empirical research done in teacher formation courses of two universities, a public and a private one, has allowed us to observe the intensification of teachers work in an extensive and intensive manner. The flexibility of employment contracts and regimes has imposed itself on public and private institutions of higher education. The reduction of expenses with the docent workforce, allied with productivism and exaggerated specialization, tends to reduce research activities in public universities and overload the professors, deprecating their working conditions and salaries. In the private sector, professors are submitted to fragmented work schedules in several institutions, to curricular flexibility, and that of their own area of specialization. Labor theory of value is the central category of analysis and explanation of The Metamorphosis of Higher Education Teachers Work: between public and mercantile.