Who wants to stop the federal universities?*
With the budget reduced it will be impossible to honor even basic expenses, such as water and electricity.
Only in Sao Paulo state, universities and federal institutes are responsible for graduating more than 100 thousand students – from basic education until post-graduation. During the pandemic, around 700 research activities and community actions against Covid-19 occur in these institutions, which includes hospital beds.
These and much other activities are in risk to be unfeasible because of the cut on the budgets. The approved value on Annual Budget Law for the federal system of technical and superior education is 18,16% lower than 2020, and there is a block of 14% in this approved budget.
Some days ago, pressured by the public alert telling that the institutions would not be able to get to the end of the year. The federal government announced what it has been named, wrongly, a budget reset, but what really happened was the releasement of part of the blocked resources. However, the universities and federal institutes need -indeed- the 18,6% reset in the budget. Without this budget it will be impossible to keep the payment of the essential bills ls such as electricity and cleaning services until December. Besides that, the equipment maintenance, and fundamental inputs acquisition. It can be added to this situation the scholarship payment interruption, which are used to invest in research and to pay for the permanence of vulnerability student into the colleges.
The federal universities budget in 2014 was R$7,4 billion. Assuming only the inflation correction the expectative for 2021 budget would be of R$10,4 billion, but the reality is a budget of R$4,5 billion. For the institutes case, in 2021 they got back to 2010 levels when the number of students was the half from the ones today.
Thus, the attack is not restrained to the defrayal. Restrictions are applied on constructions that are occurring on laboratories, as an example, as well the needed adaptations for the presential activities when they become possible. Besides that, there is R$5 billion of National Fund of Technology and Scientific Development, which differently from what was announced by the Economy Ministry, it is waiting liberation.
The financial stricture is just one of many previous attack to the place where, by definition, the exercise of free thinking assures criticism and promotes the social transformation, among which we can highlight the successive disrespect to the university autonomy on managers nomination.
Along with the attempt to confine the education, science and technology public institutions, and their capacity to promote shifts on the ways of turning Brazil a country less unequal. It is common to rise the discourse – fallacious and dangerous – that they are expensive and need to be maintained by private resources.
It is fallacious because in the developed world it is the public money that funds the superior education and the technologic and scientific development – cited frequently examples are exceptions not the rule. It is dangerous because only submit the public institutions to the mercantile and utilitarian logic, that determines what research and who can study based on the profit and on the privileges, and not on the democracy and equity.
It is always important to remember that the public resources applied in the universities are investment that return to the society multiplied. Even with the result that are classified by the mercantilist thinking as useless and, disposable.
It is the human and social sciences case. They are fundamental to comprehension and transformation of the world where we live, that are undergoing this disqualification and consequent budget cut, but we can go further. Would the researches started decades ago and that in 2020 allowed the vaccines development in record time would have been saw as useful and profitable back on the initial years? No all of them.
Our alert is that if the actual conditions are maintained they will force federal universities and institutes to stop. Definitively it is not our intention. We will resist and fight with all our possibilities, so the essential activities for the recuperation and development of our country do not become unfeasible.
Ana Beatriz de Oliveira
President of Federal University of Sao Carlos (UFSCar)
Dácio Matheus
President of Federal University of the ABC (UFABC)
Nelson Sass
President of Federal University of Sao Paulo (Unifesp)
Silmário Batista dos Santos
President of Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Sao Paulo (IFSP)
*Published at Folha de São Paulo newspaper in May 19th, 2021