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DOCUMENT
ADVISORY
TEAM REPORT FOR HIGHER EDUCATION PLANNING (MEC-USAID AGREEMENT)
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Zuleide S. Silveira
Fluminense Federal University
Niterói, RJ, Brazil
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22409/mov.v7i14.47208
Presentation
In Brazil in the 1960s, when the work of the
university reform began, there was a set of subsidies, from the studies
produced at the international level, such as the Atcon
Report ‒ La Universidad Latino
Americana Clave para un enfoque conjunto del desarrollo coordinado social, económico y educativo en América Latin, 1961, and the roundtable Higher Education and Latin American
Development, promoted by the Interamenricano
Development Bank and held, in 1965, in Asunción, Paraguay, through the set of
formulations of the still-genesic science
and technology policy (S&T), to the Meira Mattos Report, the
Agreements between the Ministry of Education and Culture and the United States
International Agency for Development(MEC-USAID)
and the Report of the Advisory Team for Higher
Education Planning (EAPES), among others.
The university reform, promoted by the Brazilian military
government, through Law no.
5,540/1968, established standards for the organization and functioning of
undergraduate and graduate studies, based on the North American model of higher
education, establishing, among other measures, the credit system, the
semiannual course regime with curricular fragmentation, the organization of the
university by specialized departments, in addition to continuing the
instrumentalization of scientific-technological research, "driven by CAPES
and CNPq, directed by substantial resources of the
[National Fund for Technological Scientific Development/Fund for Financing
Studies and Projects and Programs] FNDCT/FINEP" (LONGO, 2009, p. 5)[1].
Although it was implemented under the aegis of AI-5,
1968, the university reform was initiated with the granting of Decree-Law no. 53 of November 18, 1966, which
established the principles and norms of organization of federal universities
and distinguishing basic research from applied research, and also decree-law
no 252,
of February 28, 1967, standardizing the predecessor Decree-Law no. 53/66. In practice, it
developed from populist governments as the work of the Commission supervisory
of the Institutes Plan (COSUPI), constituted to reformulate the teaching of
engineering, through Ordinance no. 102 of January 28, 1958 (CUNHA, 1983).
These Decree-Laws already responded to the MEC-USAID
Agreements, signed since the 1950s, between the Brazilian and U.S. governments
to establish an exchange of technical knowledge, preparation of plans and
actions related to the economic development of Brazil and the expansion and
restructuring of the Brazilian educational system.
It is in this context that, in 1965, Flávio
Suplicy de Lacerda, Minister
of education and culture, Stuart Van
Dyke, Director of USAID in Brazil, Deolindo Couto, President
of Education Federal Council (CFE) and Faria Góis, representative of Brazil for Technical Cooperation - Point
IV, sign the agreement for the restructuring of the national higher education
system and establish the creation of a staff of technicians specialized in educational
planning, formed by five Brazilians and five Americans. This staff originated
the Higher Education Planning Team (EPES), then called the Higher Education
Planning Advisory Team (EAPES).
The document Advisory Team Report for Higher
Education Planning (EAPES) – MEC-USAID
Agreement which we now
incorporate into the
Dossier 55 years of Graduate Studies in Brazil,
officially
presented on August 29, 1968 and published in 1969, its content and conceptions
maintained by the University Reform Group, created by Decree No. 62,937 of
July 2, 1968, by the close relationship maintained between that Team and the
Group.
In its almost 700 pages the Report is not only
detailed information of the work carried out by EAPES. It is possible to
capture the contradictions by which capitalist development and the production
of new and innovative knowledge operate, as well as the internal disputes with
the Team and the conceptions of organization and functioning of higher
education institutions, currently constituted as an articulated and hierarchical system of formative offerings of short,
medium and long duration.
As education, in the Team's view, is a requirement of
capitalist economic development, being a coetanus and
adjustable to it, there is a substantive and undeniable convergence between
economic development and cultural development. Not without reason Antonio
Gramsci points out that an intellectual and moral reform cannot fail to be
linked to an economic reform program (GRAMSCI, 2007, p. 19).
The truth is that
there is enormous discontent with the existing systems, and that is why
everything is criticized, teaching, teachers, rectors, the chair for life, the
disconnection between the University and society. Almost everyone is willing to
declare that teaching in Brazil, and even in the world, is obsolete,
anachronistic, outdated, alienated, medieval. And the conclusion is that
radical and urgent reform of education is needed. All these criticisms are
worth half-truths. Because the solution lies not only in the reform of
education, but in a broader reform of society, of newspapers, of radio, of
television, of working methods, of the whole civil and military functionalism,
in short, of our conceptions of life, of the philosophical atmosphere of
Western culture itself. The fight against the defects of the Brazilian
education system should be a struggle in which not only the Government, but the
Brazilian family, and especially teachers and students, is committed (BRASIL,
1969, p.32).
It is, therefore, to modify the view of a significant
portion of society, particularly the middle class, about work, the formation of
the workforce for the dependent, associated and subaltern insertion to the
process of internationalization of the economy/technology. After all, it was
time to apply the Theory of Human Capital to educational policies to be
promoted by the dictatorial regime.
EAPES, when examining the problems of Brazilian higher
education, takes the North American university as a model and establishes a
close and linear relationship between education and economic development. For
the Team, spending on education represents a profitable investment in the
formation of human capital, however, it should be understood that the federal
government has scarce resources to prioritize education in its investments,
making it necessary, therefore, to call on organized civil society around the
business to solve the problem of education financing:
The importance of a
certain level of education is not based on the budget. National education is a
movement of collective and solidarity responsibility, as proclaimed by numerous
Brazilian educators, such as Anísio Teixeira and
Carlos Pasquale. Both in its deepest roots and in its higher specializations,
education is reflection of the intimate forces that animate society. It is not
the result of just the efforts, more or less spasmodic,
of the political class. Education is perhaps the most characteristic expression
of a society's life. And even without public school, there have been areas in
Brazil where there was not a single illiterate (BRASIL, 1969, p. 26).
In addition to this aspect, which brought in its bulge
the incentive to the explosion of courses in the private school network and the
approximation between state, university and private company, the university
focused on capitalist development would be responsible for potentiating human skills
or vocations, diversifying the formative offer at the higher level of
education.
Thus, in the work of EAPES, the proposal of Anísio Teixeira (1988) that takes as paradigm the North
American model of modern university is materialized. This university, when
building at the service of the State and focused on problem solving, seeks the
formation of different work capacities: "a relatively simple and practical
teaching for obtaining degrees corresponding to the B.A. and the B.S.
Americans, and another, rigorous and demanding, to obtain degrees corresponding
to the M.A., M.S. and Ph.D." (BRAZIL, 1969,
p. 29).
Higher education in the United States – undergraduated – has its courses distributed in academic areas,
characterized according to its duration: associated degrees and bachelors
degrees. The diplomas awarded to
graduates of humanities and social sciences are bachelors arts (B.A.) diplomas and graduates of the exact sciences
receive bachelors science (B.S.).
Following the same criterion of division by area of knowledge, the master's courses
confer the titles of Master of Arts
(M.A.) to masters formed in the field of human and social sciences; and
Master of Science (M.S.) in the area of exact sciences. There is
also the Master of Fine Arts (MFA), which includes the courses of Photography
and Theater, and the Master
in Business Administration (MBA), professional master's degree, lasting only two
years. Other master's degrees such as journalism are only one year long. As for
doctoral courses, there are professionals who confer the title of
Professional Doctore, who, unlike
the academic doctorate – research doctore (Ph.D.)
– does not require the generation of new knowledge through research, having as
a requirement, only, the performance of the doctoral student in disciplines and
internship.
In fact, the model of functioning and structure of higher
education proposed by EAPES, in open opposition to the supposed long-term
courses and obsolestism of knowledge, is what came to
be materialized in Brazil, from the second half of the 1990s.
Regarding the increase in the number of enrollments in
the private school system, EAPES envisions what came to materialize in the
Educational Credit Program (CREDUC), created in 1975. CREDUC joined the Student Finance Fund (FIES)
in 1999 and the University for All Program (PROUni)
in 2004.
As for private
universities, its foundation should be encouraged by providing them with aid to
them in order to secure vacancies for poor students.
But only in extreme, truly exceptional cases should the Government encamp or
federalize them, assuming the entire financial burden. The available government
resources should be used, above all, in the extension of existing official
universities, at least for the time being. Instead of founding new schools or
encamping private schools, the Government should increase the capacity of its
traditional higher schools (BRASIL, 1969, p.63).
The issue of science and technology, made the object of
government policy, was explained in the Strategic Development Plan that gave
rise to the FNDCT, created in 1969, with the purpose of giving financial
support to programs and projects scientific and technological development, with
the support of the IDB.
However, well before the creation of the FNDCT, EAPES
already evoked higher education, particularly graduate studies, to play a
strategic role in the production of S&T and in the process of training
highly qualified personnel in solidarity collaboration between state, private
company, and university.
It is necessary to
develop a graduate program aimed at solving some of the most serious problems
that hinder Brazilian progress: the lack of higher education staff, the
imperative of opening new frontiers in the field of scientific research and
training of high-level researchers, the requirement to keep the country's
scientific research at a level compatible with international scientific
standards and, finally, the need for a 'recycling' work to update the knowledge
and techniques of graduate professionals in higher schools. It is therefore
urgent to promote a national policy of broad incentive to scientific research
in the various fields of knowledge, which can count on the solidarity support
of the Trinomial State-University-Company, so that it meets the imperatives of
security, science and productivity (BRASIL, 1969, p.175).
The principle of university autonomy is seen "as a
creative force of science, technique and the highest values of universal
culture", which affirmed in institutional individuality, "ensures
freedom in the permanent search for pedagogical solutions always more
improved" with the private company. Thus, didactic, administrative, financial and disciplinary autonomy, more than a simple legal status, should be
seen as an attribute of the
university community when associating itself in a subordinate
way to the business sector.
To close the presentation of the Document, entitled Report
of the Advisory Team for The Planning of Higher Education (EAPES) – MEC-USAID Agreement, it is necessary to highlight
that the concept of university proposed in it and its guidelines, whose
instrumental rationality overlaps with critical and creative rationality, have
been marking the entire process of counter-reform of higher education, ongoing
in this neoliberal temporality.[2]
It is therefore expected that its publication will
contribute to the deepening of studies on the theme of Higher Education.
References
BRASIL. Ministério da Educação e
Cultura. Relatório da Equipe de
Assessoria ao Planejamento do Ensino Superior (Acordo MEC-USAID).
Brasília: MEC: EAPES, 1969. Disponível em:
http://www.dominiopublico.gov.br/download/texto/me002109.pdf
CUNHA,
Luiz Antonio. A universidade crítica: o ensino superior na República Populista.
Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves, 1983.
FERNANDES,
Florestan. Universidade Brasileira:
reforma ou revolução? São
Paulo: Alfa-Ômega, 1975.
GRAMSCI, Antonio.
Cadernos do cárcere. v.3. Maquiavel; Notas sobre o Estado e a política. 3.ed.
Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2007.
LONGO, Waldimir
Pirró; DERENUSSON, Maria Sylvia. FNDCT, 40 anos. Revista Brasileira de
Inovação. Campinas:
UNICAMP; FINEP, v. 8, no 2, 2009, pp. 515-533.
SILVEIRA, Zuleide Simas da. Concepções de educação tecnológica na reforma
da educação superior: finalidades, continuidades, e rupturas - estudo comparado
Brasil e Portugal (1995-2010). Tese
(Doutorado em Educação). Niterói: UFF, 2011. Disponível em:
https://marxismo21.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TESE-FINAL-Zuleide-Silveira.pdf
SILVEIRA,
Zuleide S. concepção burguesa de
educação tecnológica, desenvolvimento econômico e política de ciência,
tecnologia e inovação. Revista
Trabalho, Política e Sociedade, v.
05, n. 08, p. 95-117, jan.-jun., 2020.
TEIXEIRA, Anísio. Educação e universidade. Rio de Janeiro: EdUFRJ,
1988.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ZULEIDE S.
SILVEIRA holds a PhD in education from the Fluminense Federal University (UFF), an
interim Doctorate from the University of Lisbon and a Master's degree in
Education from the Fluminense Federal University (UFF), professor at the
Faculty of Education and Graduate Programs (lato sensu and stricto sensu) in Education at the Fluminense Federal
University, coordinator of the State, Labor, Education and Development Research
Group: Latin American critical thinking and translation of Antonio Gramsci
(GPETED/UFF), editor-in-chief of Movement-Journal of Education and member of
the Forum for The Management of Higher Education in Portuguese-speaking
Countries and Regions, based in Lisbon.
E-mail:
zuleidesilveira@gmail.com
Received: 19.11.2020
Accepted: 20.11.2020