An overview on cutting public spending on Brazilian higher education

by Thais Dibbern and Evandro Coggo Cristofoletti

Reviewed by Matheus Lucas Hebling

Since 2015, the Brazilian state has been making budget cuts in several areas that deal with fundamental human rights. One of them refers to education itself. According to the report “Austerity and regression – public finances and fiscal policy in Brazil,” published in 2016, the Brazilian state has been influenced and subjected to the discourse that the only way to recover the economy refers to austerity, i.e., it ois proposed to reduce wages and public spending. Such argument, according to the same document, concerns the clear objective of redefining the role of the State to satisfy certain interests.
Therefore, as a reaction to a scenario of falling economic growth and tax cuts, the second Dilma Rousseff government began to adopt an economic strategy through price shocks, in parallel with fiscal and monetary adjustments. In other words, a fiscal austerity policy began to be implemented that aimed to achieve the return of private sector investments by increasing profits and competitiveness of companies (Forum 21 et al., 2016). In effect, such fiscal adjustment ended up further weakening the economy, aggravating the already existing problems, and turning the economic slowdown into an economic depression. The fiscal austerity policy implemented, therefore, began to generate an increase in the public deficit and public debt (Forum 21 et al., 2016).
Since the impediment suffered by the ex-president Dilma Rousseff, there has been an intensification of the process of reducing public spending through fiscal adjustment and, consequently, the processes of commodificationand privatization, not only of higher education and the public university but also of other public services and economic sectors. What is interesting to note is how this has been occurring considering the proposed theme. To explain this intensification, we think it is pertinent to cite three exemplary documents to discuss trends in higher education in Brazil. The first of them was released in October 2015 by the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), called “A Bridge to the Future”.
In this document, the strategic line of action of the post-impediment government was drawn. We will not analyze this document. However, it can be said that the main idea brought up in the text is that the State would spend too much on public policies of a social nature and that it was necessary to resume “fiscal balance,” betting on a development strategy centered on the private initiative through the advancement of privatization and outsourcing, as well as reducing the cost of labor and increasing its productivity (PMDB, 2015). Resuming Mancebo (2017, p. 880), the document proposes a budget regime with revenue disengagement, leading to the end of the financing model for education and public health; the end of the policy of valuing the minimum wage; the deregulation and flexibilization of labor laws to ease the “cost” of labor for the businessman; the social security reform; the increase of privatizations, “in which one can expect the end of the sharing regime and the control of Petrobras, the Pre-Salt, and the sale of Caixa Econômica and Banco do Brasil assets”; among others.
The issue of education was not much discussed, remaining in the background. However, the panorama that was drawn was clear: public spending on education, at all levels, would have to be reduced. As an example of the action taken, we can cite the Proposal for Amendment to the Constitution No. 55 of 2016, called the PEC of the Public Spending Ceiling (PEC 241/2016, popularly known as the “End of the World PEC”). In general terms, the amendment approved the freezing, for 20 years, of public spending in several areas. In this sense, the process of commodification began to intensify, concretely, through cuts in resources to federal public HEIs. In practice, this means structural damage since it forces them to do the same – or more – work with fewer resources.
Thus, the tendency is that the intellectual work (teaching, research, and extension/engagement) becomes more compromised, with increased precariousness of teaching work in public universities, as well as the intensification of internal competition for resources from funding agencies and public and private organizations (Mancebo, 2017). Along these lines, the second document that we would like to highlight as exemplary of the current trends in higher education refers to the World Bank report, published in November 2017, called “A Fair Adjustment: Analysis of the efficiency and equity of public spending in Brazil. The study about public spending at the federal level concluded that the State spends poorly, that is, inefficiently and excessively. Among the topics addressed was higher education, and the conclusions, in general, were a large part of undergraduate students in Brazil are allocated in private colleges and universities, which are more efficient in terms of cost per student; meanwhile, the public network would present itself as inefficient in its spending, being very costly for the public budget (World Bank, 2017). In this sense, the reduction of public spending and fiscal adjustment policies would be imperative to macroeconomic balance and the recovery of growth.
The World Bank analysis has an economic bias and argues that Brazil’s overall public spending on education exceeds its “international peers” (BRICS). Thus, the argument is drawn that the cost of a student in public universities is up to three times more than a student in a private university, considered to be more efficient. Furthermore, the report concludes that public spending on public HEIs tends to benefit the wealthier part of the population, which has greater access to these institutions. In this sense, the document uses an argumentative strategy that relies on the historical Brazilian educational inequality (derived precisely from other structural inequalities) and on the supposed “cost” and efficiency of the private network to justify the charging of tuition fees in the public higher education network, the flexibilization, the outsourcing, and the implementation of more “efficient” management mechanisms in public HEIs, and to stimulate the growth of the private network.
In this line, Oliveira (2018, p. 142) presents that “fiscal austerity has regressed most of the policies of expansion and democratization of access to HE and opened space for the expansion of privatization, whose impacts will be felt in the present and next generations. It is, therefore, the deepening of the dismantling of Brazilian public higher education, which directly impacts the democratization of education: both in terms of access and the transfer of knowledge, as well as the quality of the education offered.
As for the Future-se Program, launched in July 2019 by the then Minister of Education Abraham Weintraub, under the government of Jair Bolsonaro, it aimed to promote more financial autonomy for Universities and Federal Institutes through the incentive of entrepreneurship and raising their funds. It is a voluntary program, launched while the resources provided by the State have been reduced even more abruptly. In other words, it is about a public policy that aims to articulate new agreements with non-governmental organizations, reducing public investment and compromising the functioning of public institutions of higher education, especially the Federal Universities and Institutes.
These documents, therefore, prove the relationship of influence between managerialism and education policies in Brazil. Recently, another blow on public higher education and science can also be highlighted, as is the case of the recent deletion of data on the Lattes/CNPq Platform, which refers to one of the main online platforms that aggregate data on Brazilian researchers, which will be investigated in terms of causes and possible negligence. In addition, it is possible to affirm that the government of Bolsonaro has reduced – and plans to reduce even more – the public budget for science and technology, reinforcing the trends discussed in the text.

by Thais Dibbern is a Ph.D student in Science and Technology Policy at the University of Campinas (Unicamp / Brazil). Her topics of interest are public policy analysis, higher education studies, and sustainable development. Email: dibbern.thais@gmail.com.
by Evandro Coggo Cristofoletti holds a Ph.D in Science and Technology Policy from the University of Campinas (Unicamp / Brazil). His topic of interest are higher education studies, university extension and the university’s social commitment. Email: evandro.coggo@gmail.com.

References

BANCO MUNDIAL. Um Ajuste Justo: Análise da eficiência e equidade do gasto público no Brasil. 2018. Retrieved from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/pt/884871511196609355/pdf/121480-REVISED-PORTUGUESE-Brazil-Public-Expenditure-Review-Overview-Portuguese-Final-revised.pdf.
BRASIL. Emenda constitucional nº 55, de 2016 – EC do Teto dos Gastos Públicos. Retrieved from https://www25.senado.leg.br/web/atividade/materias/-/materia/127337.
FÓRUM 21, FUNDAÇÃO FRIEDRICH EBERT STIFTUNG, PLATAFORMA POLÍTICA SOCIAL. Austeridade e Retrocesso – Finanças públicas e política fiscal no Brasil. São Paulo: setembro de 2016. Retrieved from http://brasildebate.com.br/wp-content/uploads/Austeridade-e-Retrocesso.pdf.
MANCEBO, Deise. Crise Político-Econômica no Brasil: Breve análise da educação superior. Educação & Sociedade, v. 38, n. 141, p. 875-892, 2017.
OLIVEIRA, Ana Luíza Matos. Educação superior no Brasil: a inclusão interrompida. In: ROSSI, Pedro (Org.). Economia para poucos: impactos sociais da austeridade e alternativas para o Brasil. São Paulo: Autonomia Literária, 2018.
PMDB. Uma ponte para o futuro. São Paulo: Fundação Ulysses Guimarães, 2015. Retrieved from https://www.fundacaoulysses.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/UMA-PONTE-PARA-O-FUTURO.pdf.