Exogenous Privatization and Advances of Academic Capitalism in Brazil and Argentina

Abstract

This article aims to understand the main political technologies of exogenous privatization of higher education, designed with the guidelines of international funding bodies, which have contributed to the opening and rise of the academic capitalist regime in countries such as Brazil and Argentina. The methodology used was historically critical. The investigation was qualitative, bibliographic, and documentary. To this end, the first chapter deals with the structural transformations of capitalism that supported the new governance model and, concomitantly, the exogenous privatization process of higher education at a global level. This is followed by an analysis of the higher education reforms that have taken place in Brazil and Argentina, especially since the 1980s, which have promoted the rationalization/optimization of public investment and the implementation of privatization policies. Finally, we seek to understand how educational policies, implemented in the context of neoliberal reforms, have contributed to the formation of a capitalist knowledge regime, based on the production of raw material knowledge, directly profitable. The results indicate that the political technologies of exogenous privatization of higher education have stimulated the expansion of the private/commercial sector and the redirection of public investment in favor of research to the interests of the industrial/business sector, to the detriment of “open science” (non-mercantile), favoring the advancement and materialization of academic capitalism in countries such as Brazil and Argentina.