Higher education funding on the threshold of the 21st century: the pathway to mercantilization of educationc

Abstract

The present article presents an overview of the funding of higher education in Brazil within a context of its expansion which has occurred in the last decades. These authors indicate that there is a strong and perceptible trend to mercantilization of education, resulting from the way in which educational policies have been managed by the Brazilian government, as part of the neoliberal rationale and by the pressure of multilateral bodies. This article begins by introducing (1) the sources of public and private institutions’ resources in order to afterwards analyze how (2) the estimates of public funds indicate signs of mercantilization in higher education. This paper is a partial result of a research project which is linked to the Network of Studies and Research Projects on Higher Education (REPES), registered at CNPq.