The Neoliberal University, Academic Capitalism and the Financialisation of Higher Education: The Case of Brazil

Abstract

This paper investigates how the rapid and extreme financialisation of higher education in the Brazilian case may contribute to theorising the neoliberal university. We present a first-hand empirical study based on Brazil’s seven listed HEIs. We investigate the new actors that control them and analyse their organisational structure, which represents a variation of the neoliberal university. In Brazil, the state has promoted policies that supported the entry of new financial actors into higher education. The literature on the neoliberal university investigates how state policies have forced universities to adopt managerialist practices in order to engage with the market. In academic capitalism, developing market-like activities does not mean that the neoliberal university has become part of the market, nor that it is structured as a full corporation. At most, it resembles a private enterprise, which can be termed a ‘light neoliberal university’. In Brazil, the full-corporation-neoliberal-university is a conglomerate of HEIs controlled by financial investors from corporate headquarters, where financial indicators are considered the primary drivers of performance to the benefit of shareholders. These market consolidators and market makers do not integrate with the new economy in the manner described by academic capitalism; rather, they incorporate academia. Thus, we frame this form as capitalism in academia, since these are corporations that perform academic-like activities. We posit that the academic logic supporting the social contract between universities and the societies in which they are embedded breaks down when it is replaced by the market logic of generating shareholder value. This is the deleterious effect of the full-corporation-neoliberal-university on the institutional fabric of higher education. The rapid expansion of distance learning at very low tuition fees, which delivers higher financial margins, puts pressure on all types of HEIs and on the academic labour market, while compromising education quality and completion rates.