The Rise of Academic Capitalism in Brazil’s Higher Education

• Author: Tiago Fonseca Albuquerque Cavalcanti Sigahi,Patrícia Saltorato
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211065483
• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Date: 01 May 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211065483

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 244, Vol. 49 No. 3, May 2022, 66–83

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211065483

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

66

The Rise of Academic Capitalism in Brazil’s Higher

Education

by

Tiago Fonseca Albuquerque Cavalcanti Sigahi and Patrícia Saltorato

Translated by

Luis Fierro Carrión

Academic capitalism has become one of the most influential research lines related to

higher education. However, its manifestations in developing countries need to be better

understood. Changes are taking place in Brazil that can be attributed to a move toward

academic capitalism, and concepts provided by the theory of academic capitalism offer a

fertile framework for exploring them. Analysis of official documents, regulations, and the

actions of a network of participants reveals the mechanisms that reconfigure the boundar-

ies between the public and the private to establish an academic capitalism knowledge/

learning regime. Academic capitalism in Brazil took its first steps after the 1968 reform

and was consolidated in the 1990s and instrumentalized in the 2000s, and, judging from

the associations between the current government and the business sector, it threatens to

take an even more aggressive form in the coming years.

O capitalismo acadêmico tem se configurado em uma das linhas de pesquisa mais influ-

entes no campo da educação superior. Há, porém, que melhor se entender suas manifesta-

ções em países em desenvolvimento. Estão em curso no Brasil mudanças que podem ser

atribuídas a um contexto voltado para um capitalismo acadêmico, e os conceitos oferecidos

por ela fornecem um fértil framework para explorar tais mudanças. A análise de documen-

tos oficiais, artefatos legais e da atuação de uma rede de atores, são explorados os mecanis-

mos que reconfiguram as fronteiras entre o público e o privado, colocando em movimento

um academic capitalism knowledge/learning regime. No Brasil, o capitalismo acadêmico

dá seus primeiros passos após a reforma de 1968; ascende e ganha contornos mais intensos

a partir da década de 80; consolida-se a partir da década de 90; instrumentaliza-se nos anos

2000 e, com base nas associações entre o atual governo e o setor empresarial, ameaça

assumir uma forma ainda mais agressiva nos próximos anos.

Keywords: Academic capitalism, Higher education, Financialization, Neoliberal

reforms

Recent studies (Mancebo and Silva Jr., 2015; Chauí, 2016; Leher, 2016a; Silva

Jr. and Kato, 2016; Sigahi and Saltorato, 2018; 2020b) show that, much as have

institutions in other countries (Slaughter and Cantwell, 2012), Brazilian higher

Tiago F. A. C. Sigahi is a researcher at the Universidade de São Paulo. Patrícia Saltorato is an asso-

ciate professor at the Universidade Federal de São Carlos and a researcher in the university’s

Center for Studies in Economic Sociology. Among their publications is “Academic Capitalism:

Distinguishing without Disjoining through Classification Schemes” (Higher Education 80 (1),

2020). Luis Fierro Carrión is a translator living in the Miami area.

1065483LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211065483Latin American PerspectivesSigahi and Saltorato/Academic Capitalism in Brazil’s Higher Education

research-article2021

Sigahi and Saltorato/ACADEMIC CAPITALISM IN BRAZIL’S HIGHER EDUCATION 67

education institutions have become increasingly operational, subject to

external controls, and financialized, the result of a long process of neoliberal

reforms that has blurred the boundary between public and private spheres.

Slaughter and Rhoades (2004) developed academic capitalism theory to explain

how the various groups of actors in the field of higher education—universities,

teachers, students, administrators, rectors, and others—have responded to neo-

liberal tendencies that began to treat higher education policy as a subset of

economic policy. The academic-capitalism-theory approach is not limited to the

commodification of knowledge but also considers the changes in relations

between universities and their social environment (Kauppinen and Kaidesoja,

2013; Sigahi and Saltorato, 2020a).

According to Cantwell (2015), academic capitalism is one of the most influential

lines of research in the field of higher education. Seminal studies of it have been

conducted in the United States, the UK, Australia, and Canada (Slaughter and

Leslie, 1997), developed more intensely in the United States (Slaughter and Rhoades,

2004), and more recently extended to Europe (Slaughter and Cantwell, 2012) and

Asia (Tang, 2014). However, there is a gap in the literature in relation to its use in

developing countries (Maldonado-Maldonado, 2014; Sigahi and Saltorato, 2020a).

In Brazil some have used the term "academic capitalism" (Leher, 2004; Silva Jr. and

Kato, 2016) or "university capitalism" (Martins, 2008) to refer to neoliberal changes

in higher education, but no one has explored the theory of academic capitalism as

we propose to do here. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that changes in

higher education are taking place in Brazil that can be attributed to academic capi-

talism and that the mechanisms and concepts of the theory of academic capitalism

provide a fertile framework for exploring those changes. In the next sections, we

first present the key concepts (mechanisms) that make up the conceptual structure

of the theory. Next we examine the emergence and consolidation of academic capi-

talism in Brazil since 1960 through the study of the evidence for systematic changes

in higher education policy (official documents, legal artifacts, and the performance

of a network of actors and organizations) in terms of these mechanisms.

THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The theoretical framework includes five key mechanisms, which, as

Slaughter and Cantwell (2012) point out, may occur sequentially, simultane-

ously, independently, or recursively:

1. New knowledge circuits, created from a variety of state resources by

groups of actors in higher education to reconfigure the frontiers of knowledge.

These circuits link state agencies, corporations, and universities in conducting

market-oriented “entrepreneurial research and education" (Slaughter and

Cantwell, 2012). Slaughter and Rhoades (2004) mention the circuits that con-

nect government departments to corporations (e.g., aerospace, biotechnology,

telecommunication) in funding university research projects aimed at the devel-

opment of medical, pharmaceutical, military, and national-defense products.

They also point to the new student markets, such as for distance education and

MBAs and other professional Master’s degrees, that are widespread in the

national context.