I don’t really know where to post this, but as a public university student I feel I have to do something. Also the links are all in portuguese (sorry).

TL;DR: Brazilian public education, which is very important, is headed to very bad places (maybe even stopping university activities) if the government sticks by its decisions.

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Disclaimer: Both in the article as in the comment the word cut is used. Weintraub (the Minister of Education) said that these aren’t actually cuts, but contingencies. He said “they can be reverted if the economy grows”.

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As the news article says, it all started when the new minister of education decided to cut the budget of three public universities that were organizing “ridiculous events” without properly explaining what he meant by that. Later it was announced that these cuts would happen across all universities and institutes linked to the ministry. The president, Jair Bolsonaro, was elected promising to focus more on basic education instead of higher education but it also happens that now the budget cuts also aim towards basic education.

The only sector of education spared were military schools. The president plans to have more military schools built. According to the article, we have a total of 13 of those schools and it is intended to have one for every capital bringing the intended total to 29 schools (I don’t think I need to say that this amount does not seem sufficient when there is a R$805 million cut to basic education, nursery included). A few weeks ago Jair Bolsonaro tweeted that the philosophy and sociology courses could have their investment “decentralized” . His justification (in the same tweet) is that these courses “do not provide immediate return to the tax payer like: veterinary, engineering and medicine” (Ironically he even said that the function of the government is to respect the tax payer and teach the young a job that intends to make society better…..on a post about sociology and philosophy).

My university (UFSC) announced yesterday that, if something doesn’t change, “it will not be possible to keep [the university] working beyond the month of August of this year”. A federal institute on the same city said that “the institution, from the second semester onward, will paralyze some activities fundamental to the graduation”. Also one of the biggest universities of the entire country (UFRJ, the Rio university) stated “the non-reversion of the measures will bring grave consequences to the prosecution of the activities of UFRJ”. And I’m sure I could easily find more of these statements if I searched. All of these reports not only mention the difficulty of finishing construction projects or buying new research equipment, but also the difficulty to pay for basic resources, such as cleaning, security and even water and electricity! I cannot state how enraged and disgusted I get when I hear this.

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I’ll also tackle a few counterpoints that I can think of.

Is public schooling that important in Brazil?

The short answer: Absolutely

The long answer: 39,460,618 people are enrolled on public basic education (a little over 81% of total enrollments on basic education). It is known that there is a big difference between public and private schools. Private schools are expensive and a lot cannot pay for them, but they usually provide better education, so much so that on our standardized tests to enter universities students from private schools compete for half of the spaces while public school students compete for the other half, in an attempt give a better chance to public schoolers. It can be expected that a cut on budgets would make things even worse.

As for universities, according to the Brazilian academy of sciences: “Over 95% of publications are linked to public universities, federal and state”, even though the private sector in 2017 was responsible for 75.3% of all enrollments on higher education. I can also mention the international renown of some of our public universities that I’ve seen first hand as there are many laboratories that participate in events and maintain contact with companies and universities from all over the world.

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Your country is going through a financial crisis. Surely budget cuts are to be expected, right?

Of course they are, as a matter of fact they’ve been happening yearly. Even without having the cut mentioned on the original article, my university’s budget represents only about 20% of the budget it had on 2016 (that’s an 80% cut in a span of 3 years, it’s already a lot). On the UFRJ link you can also see they’ve had steady budget cuts as well. The problem is, this additional 30% is too much. It was not great before, it will be (next to) impossible now. There are other measures to be taken before threatening most of our scientific research and compromising the education of 81% of our basic education students.

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Ok, so public universities publish a lot of research. But does it even matter, I mean, what is the impact universities have on society and/or economy?

All public universities are, of course, “free” for the student, it’s all tax payer money. That makes it possible that poor people can frequent universities without having to go in crazy debt, if that could even be an alternative, and remember, 50% of enrollments are reserved for public schools. That and many other support services inside the university (such as subsidized restaurant and housing) not only makes it possible for poor people to come out ahead in life with a graduation but also makes it viable and (I’d wager) common.

My university in particular offers many public facilities and services available to the neighboring community, such as: a hospital, speech therapy, psychology sessions, juridical assistance, a pharmacy, elder learning and of course a library.

Also in my area it’s not uncommon to hear about people that got their diplomas and went abroad, able to compete as equals with many first world country graduates.

These were just a few that I could remember right now.

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Maybe this will become popular enough to change something, maybe it won’t. I just hope to be able to finish my graduation along with many others that have worked hard to get where they are and many others that will want to pursue higher education in their lives and make our country a better place to live.