Financialization of Capital and its Implications for the Work and Career of Higher Education Teachers in Brazil

Abstract

The paper addresses the impacts of financialization on academic work in Brazilian public higher education. It is grounded in the social theory of Karl Marx, as well as bibliographic and documentary research. It is evaluated that this level of education has been undergoing changes in recent decades, expressed through budgetary strangulation, corporate management, and the deterioration of general teaching/work conditions. These transformations are inserted into a global context of capital financialization, deep crisis, and the search to recover profit rates fundamentally through the superexploitation of workers, redirection of public funds to capital, and privatization of social sectors. The State sustains this process through a dual movement: reforms in the service of capital and the hardening of the regime against workers. In parallel with the dismantling of public universities, the remuneration and career of teachers have been progressively degraded, despite the resistance of the category.