{"id":314098,"date":"2019-12-09T16:47:49","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T19:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=314098"},"modified":"2020-02-18T18:10:05","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T21:10:05","slug":"a-legacy-for-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/a-legacy-for-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"A legacy for the future"},"content":{"rendered":"

The legal and budgetary framework that provided funding stability to state universities in S\u00e3o Paulo has now completed its third decade in force. On February 2, 1989, a decree by the then governor of S\u00e3o Paulo, Orestes Qu\u00e9rcia (1938\u20132010), granted financial autonomy to the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP), the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and S\u00e3o Paulo State University (UNESP), and allocated a fixed percentage of 8.4% of state sales tax (ICMS) to funding for the three institutions. The Council of Deans of State Universities in S\u00e3o Paulo (CRUESP), created two years earlier, was tasked with managing the distribution of funding, with USP initially receiving 4.46%, UNICAMP 2%, and UNESP, 1.94%.<\/p>\n

The 1989 decree became a milestone in higher education in Brazil as a model that succeeded in bolstering and strengthening the country’s three largest research universities, and in providing academic freedom while maintaining competition for funding with other government agencies and departments. Today, USP, UNESP, and UNICAMP together produce 35% of all research indexed on the Web of Science platform. But for all these benefits, the framework introduced by the decree has remained unique to S\u00e3o Paulo; no peer states have since adopted similar principles, and no federal universities have been granted financial autonomy. It is also curious that the rules were introduced through a simple decree, whereas originally there had been plans to enact them through the State Constitution or ordinary legislation.<\/p>\n

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But the model has been reaffirmed each year in the annual budgets passed by the Legislative Assembly, and has been ratified by all state governors since, two of whom\u2014Luiz Antonio Fleury Filho and M\u00e1rio Covas (1930\u20132001)\u2014in fact increased the percentage of ICMS tax allotted to universities, which since 1995 has stood at 9.57%. \u201cThis has set S\u00e3o Paulo apart from other states and illustrates the importance that S\u00e3o Paulo society attaches to universities,\u201d says linguist Carlos Vogt, who served as dean at UNICAMP between 1990 and 1994. \u201cNo one has dared to desecrate this sanctuary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The granting of financial autonomy to state universities in S\u00e3o Paulo occurred in the historical context of Brazil\u2019s redemocratization and, in particular, the passage of a new Federal Constitution. Article 207 of the 1988 Constitution calls for \u201ceducational, scientific, administrative, financial, and asset-management autonomy\u201d at universities and requires them “to adhere to the principle of inseparability of education, research, and extension.\u201d Physicist Jos\u00e9 Goldemberg, who served as dean of USP between 1986 and 1990, notes that the Constituent Assembly\u2019s initial draft of this article contained a proviso that could have delayed implementation, or prevented it altogether. \u201cThe last part of the article stated that \u201cautonomy shall be implemented as shall be provided by law.\u201d This would have consigned the rules to ordinary legislation and could have delayed implementation, as would indeed occur with many other articles of the Constitution,\u201d he recalls. Goldemberg was a close acquaintance of the deputy rapporteur of the Constituent Assembly, senator M\u00e1rio Covas\u2014he had worked with him during the Andr\u00e9 Franco Montoro administration (1983\u20131987)\u2014and convinced him of the importance of removing the proviso and maintaining autonomy as a general rule. \u201cThe final draft removed the need for subsequent regulation,\u201d says Goldemberg.<\/p>\n

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The academic freedom decree<\/p><\/div>\n

While the autonomy decree makes reference to Article 207 of the Constitution, Governor Orestes Qu\u00e9rcia also had his own and contextual reasons for his decision. The crisis in the 1980s had led to runaway inflation and a succession of economic plans that tried, in vain, to contain it. And the resulting erosion of workers\u2019 wages had fueled strikes that paralyzed state universities in S\u00e3o Paulo. \u201cThe governor felt that the pressure for funding and wage increases would be recurring. He was unfamiliar with the academic environment, but intuition led him to allocate a percentage of tax revenues and to leave to deans both the benefits and the burden of managing funds,\u201d says Frederico Mazzucchelli, a professor at the Institute of Economics at UNICAMP, who previously served as State Secretary of Economics. Mazzucchelli recalls how Qu\u00e9rcia confided his idea to him during a flight. \u201cThe governor said to me: \u2018We give them the money and our troubles are over.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The university and research agenda gained traction in the 1980s and was supported by the Legislative Assembly, recalls Aloysio Nunes Ferreira<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mazzucchelli sought out Science and Technology Secretary Luiz Gonzaga Belluzzo, whom he knew from UNICAMP, and the pair got to work on developing a draft. \u201cThe initial reaction from deans was a mixture of surprise and suspicion; only the dean at UNESP, Jorge Nagle, was enthusiastic from the outset. They needed to be convinced that this was important,\u201d he recalls. There were also opposing voices within the government to contend with. The then Secretary of Administration, Alberto Goldman, was opposed to committing tax revenues on the grounds that it would impose the agendas of certain interest groups on democratically elected governments. After several rounds of discussions with deans and secretaries, a formula allocating 8.4% of ICMS tax revenue was arrived at; this was equivalent to the average amount of funding the universities had received in the previous three years. \u201cUNICAMP Dean Paulo Renato Souza [1945\u20132011], who had served as secretary of education years before, helped make the calculations,\u201d Goldemberg recalls.<\/p>\n

In February 1989, when the draft was ready, the governor called the deans to his cabinet and signed the decree into law. Geologist Paulo Milton Barbosa Landim, who had just replaced Nagle as dean of UNESP, recalls that the governor mentioned the pressure he had received from universities as one of his motivations. \u201cHe stated up front that, since universities had academic independence and he could not interfere in their management, then they should also have financial independence, which meant the deans would be left to deal with issues related to professors\u2019 salaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carlos Vogt believes the discussion on the governor’s motives is secondary: \u201cWhat\u2019s important to remember is the context surrounding the financial autonomy decree and the governor\u2019s merit in signing it. It\u2019s a legacy he left that continues to yield important dividends for universities today.\u201d Vogt believes the framework drew inspiration from a previous initiative in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo\u2014the creation of FAPESP in 1962, with funding then provided by a government endowment fund and an allocation of 0.5% of state tax revenues to fund research. \u201cFAPESP was born out of a movement within S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s 1947 Constituent Assembly that valued intellect, science, and culture. It created a paradigm that set the state apart and catalyzed a movement toward establishing financial autonomy at universities,\u201d says Vogt, who served as chairman of the foundation between 2002 and 2007.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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It was no coincidence then, he continues, that eight months after Qu\u00e9rcia\u2019s decree, the new State Constitution increased FAPESP\u2019s allocation of state revenues from 0.5% to 1%, and added investment in technological development to its mandate. \u201cThe university and research agenda had gained momentum and was supported by state deputies affiliated with the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), who were a majority in the House,\u201d recalls the then government House leader, Aloysio Nunes Ferreira, who authored the amendment to the S\u00e3o Paulo Constitution that increased FAPESP\u2019s funding allocation. Other initiatives in support of science also marked the Montoro and Qu\u00e9rcia administrations, he says, such as the creation of careers in research and the revitalization of state research institutes. \u201cThe redemocratization process had given traction to the university cause. Governor Qu\u00e9rcia, a politician who had risen to prominence precisely during the redemocratization years, was sensitive to this,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The practical effect of financial autonomy is that universities were able to better organize and plan their development. They were able to pursue initiatives that began in the mid-1980s to reformulate faculty and staff careers in a manner better suited to each university, explains Jos\u00e9 Goldemberg. What is more, they no longer had to go hat in hand to multiple government agencies to get funding. \u201cI remember having to go to the Office of Administration to discuss such trivial things as rules on paying day rates and overtime to the chauffeurs who drove deans from USP campuses in minor cities to S\u00e3o Paulo,\u201d says Goldemberg. Following the decree, UNICAMP launched a Quality Program that encouraged professors to pursue doctoral degrees. \u201cHalf of the faculty then only had master\u2019s degrees. Today they are virtually all PhDs,\u201d says Vogt. \u201cEven an environment of economic turbulence, such as in the wake of the Collor Plan in 1990, can be navigated by universities with a guaranteed source of funding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n <\/picture>\n

But there were disputes that still lingered. UNESP, the youngest and most decentralized of S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s state universities, was unhappy with the share it had been given in tax venues. \u201cThe calculation was based on the average funding the universities had received in the previous three years, but UNESP was unfortunate in that shortly before the decree, in August 1988, its fixed costs had risen significantly when it took over the Municipal University of Bauru. And this was not computed in the three-year average,\u201d recalls Landim. The problem was mitigated by the decisions of Governors Fleury and Covas to raise the percent allocation in 1990 and 1995, although the increase was distributed proportionally among all three universities. \u201cUNESP was the most active in these discussions,\u201d says the former dean. He believes UNESP owes its consolidation to financial autonomy. \u201cWe modeled our institution after USP and UNICAMP, Brazil\u2019s two best universities, and stable funding enabled us to lift quality.\u201d<\/p>\n

The financial autonomy decree contained a recommendation that was ultimately never followed. It suggested that personnel expenses should not exceed 75% of the funding universities received from the government. In recent years, growing payroll expenses and declining tax revenues as a result of the economic crisis have compelled universities to use their reserves and implement spending cuts, with salaries now exceeding total available funding. \u201cIf there is one thing that I regret it is not having fought to make that recommendation a requirement,\u201d says Jos\u00e9 Goldemberg. \u201cAt the time, we thought it would be contradictory for the government to impose an obligation in a decree that gave us autonomy.\u201d Funding tied up to salaries has become an obstacle to university autonomy, says the former USP dean. \u201cTruly independent management requires that deans have a margin of funding to invest in modernization and in emerging fields. With the crisis, deans have now lost much of that maneuverability.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A decree issued in 1989 created an original funding model that unlocked extraordinary growth at state universities in S\u00e3o Paulo","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":314099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[226,234],"coauthors":[98],"class_list":["post-314098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-policies-st-en","tag-education","tag-finance","keywords-university-autonomy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314098"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333815,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314098\/revisions\/333815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314098"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=314098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}