The World Bank and the counter-reform of Brazilian higher education in the Lula da Silva government (2003-2010)

Abstract

This article aims at analyzing the relationship between expressed elaborations of World Bank documents on Brazilian education and the counter-reformation of higher education system performed by Lula da Silva in the period of 2003 and 2010. It also seeks to identify and analyze the conception of higher education project by World Bank for Brazil, besides describing and analyzing the policies that are in the counter-reformation of Brazilian higher education system in Lula da Silva's Government (2013 - 2010) in the light of World Bank formulations for education in such period. To this end, it was analyzed World Bank's of official documents that deal with higher education policies in Brazil. A research on educational legislation of the counter-reformation was also conducted. It is argued that the World Bank has played a prominent role in the definition of the content of policies that composed the counter-reformation in higher education during the Lula da Silva's Government, with the aim of increasing economic opening to private capital of education sector through the expansion of private Height Education Institutes (HEIs) and maintaining of a public funding standard for this level of education that was not so expensive for the Government, driving the trend to private business on public higher education sector through the establishment of management contracts and public-private partnerships. It is also argued that the counter-reformation process of higher education has as more general causes the structural crisis of the capital system and the neoliberal reform of the Brazilian State in the context of globalization of capitalist economy.