A reforma neoliberal da educação superior brasileira (1995 – 2006)

Abstract

After the crisis of the welfare state, in the central countries of capitalism, the guarantor state of rights and individualized development projects began to be questioned. In the following decades, a series of recommendations were advocated by financial and multilateral organizations directing political and economic reforms worldwide. It was a new hegemony of liberal economic thought called neoliberalism. The measures identified with neoliberalism broke out in Brazil in the 1990s and since then they have been taken over by the political spectrum that I characterize as Brazilian social democracy. Managerialism, a management model based on the assumptions of efficiency and productivity, propelled the country through State reforms that reached the higher education sector, subjecting it to the logic of business management in the educational field. This public management model strengthened the process in which universities lose their character as a social institution to become operational universities, a type of social organization in which academic pragmatism adopts quantitative criteria to evaluate learning and teaching work along the lines of business administration, quality is subjected to quantity based on value systems based on ranking of institutions. From these circumstances, the expansion of higher education occurs mainly by the private sector, which faces the competitive market due to the demand for undergraduate courses, making them an offer offered by companies in the educational sector. This study aimed to analyze the neoliberal reform of Brazilian higher education based on its multiple determinations, having the Marxist tradition as its theoretical and methodological scope, proposing conjuncture analyzes, at different levels of totality, seeking to signify the importance of political subjects of classes and categories that were represented at the political level. As part of the conclusion, I sought to suggest the categorization of this reform as neoliberal pointing to the construction of the hegemony of financial capital within the power bloc during the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the condition of dependence on the bourgeoisie educational services and its political rise in the government of Luís Inácio Lula da Silva who stimulated the advancement of private education, including for the working classes, often sponsored by public funding.