The Academic Profession in Brazil

Simon Schwartzman and Elizabeth Balbachevsky

Universidade de São Paulo

Published in Phillip G. Altabach, ed., The International Academic Profession: Portraits from 14 Countries. Princeton, NY: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1997.


Chapter 6: Participation and world views: different groups, different perceptions.

If a profession is more than a nominal concept, this should be reflected in active participation of its members in some kind of collective entity, which would express their common identity and interests; if they belong to different groups, it is likely that their attitudes and perceptions will also vary. In fact, Brazilian professors participate both in academic institutions and in the National Association of Higher Education Docents, a nationwide union that has its stronger constituency in the federal and state universities outside São Paulo. The graphic on table 16 shows that there are two distinct patterns of participation among Brazilian professors. Participation in unions is stronger among persons with an intermediate level of qualification, working in federal or state, public institutions; while participation in national and international professional and academic associations is strongly correlated with academic rank.

The survey confirms that the Brazilian professor is as differentiated as the higher education institutions where they work. Based on these data, and on the knowledge about how the higher education system has developed in the last decades, it is possible to classify the professors in the survey along four main types, and then examine if their outlooks actually differ.

Type I is the traditional professor, prestigious names in their professions who occupy the highest ranks in the schools of law, medicine, engineering and dentistry. Law professors typify this group at its best. They dedicate most of their time to their bench, bring their best students to work with them, give magisterial lectures, do not do any systematic research, and do not hold a doctoral degree. They do not know that an "academic profession" exist at all, and are, for all purposes, members of the legal profession. In Brazilian higher education, this traditional type was severely wounded by the elimination of university chairs in 1968, and is being overwhelmed by the other types that emerged in more recent years. For this analysis, we included in this group academics in medicine, law, dentistry and engineering which work in public institutions and do not have a full-time academic job.

Type II is the younger professor, very often a man, dedicated to his academic career. He works full-time at a good university, publishes regularly, holds a doctor's degree. He has very often studied abroad, speaks more than one language, and has a degree in the basic or the social sciences. He is concerned with social problems and expects to be useful through his expertise. His professional identity is based on his fields of competence and specialization, and on a work ethics grounded on individual competence and freedom to choose his own subjects of research, study and reflection. He incarnates, in short, the ideal of the modern research university and the academic profession. For this analysis, we included in this group those with a doctoral degree working full time in a public institution, outside the fields included in type I.


Type III is the professor, very often a woman in the humanities and education, who got a stable and full-time job in a public institution, but did not have the conditions or the opportunity to reach the standards of professional achievement of type II. Even when her values are similar to those of group II, her practice is different. Her professional identity is not given by her undergraduate degree, as in the traditional professions, nor by her individual achievements as an independent scholar and researcher, as in type II, but to the appurtenance to an institution and a group with whom she shares the daily problems, achievements and routines of academic life. It is in this group of professors where one could find some of the central dilemmas that are common to all processes of professionalization: the tensions between the ideals of the collectivist trade unions and the individualistic liberal professions; the opposition between the values of personal achievement and those of the professional community; and, consequently, the spaces that are open or closed for intellectual growth, the development of competence and the strengthening of social responsibilities. For this analysis, we included in this group all those with a master degree or less, working full time for a public institution.

Type IV, at last, which is often assumed to be a large group, is the professor who teaches to undergraduates in private institutions, without any kind of job stability. The usual image about this type is of a person having to accumulate long hours in the classroom to earn his living, without any perspective or pretension of academic life and work. Our survey suggests that this type is less common than what one would expect. In the poorer regions, private higher education is not very large. In other places, the teacher in private institutions at night can well be the full-time professor at a public institution during the day, a graduate student, or an active professional in his field. Private education can be better than what one would expect from the absence of graduate education, full-time employment and research, which are the hallmarks of the most prestigious academic institutions. For this analysis, we included in this group all professors working for private institutions, irrespective of other characteristics.

Table 29 gives some general characteristics of the four types, and the subjects' attitudes regarding general issues, the role and the status of higher education in the country, ranked by importance(15). The liberal professionals of type I are mostly men, coming in a significant part from highly educated families. Type III is clearly the more upward mobile group, formed predominantly by women coming from less educated families. Type IV, surprisingly, has the highest percentage of well-educated parents, and is also predominantly male, dispelling the notion that those who work for the private sector form some kind of academic proletariat. Type II occupies an intermediate position.

Table 29: Attitudes of academics according to four types.
  Type I Type II Type III Type IV Total Significance
General characteristics: of the groups
% of males 86.4 64.2 45.2 69.5 60.4  
% of fathers with higher education 36.3 36.7 29.0 37.4 33.8  
% that believe academic freedom is not protected 50.0 44.2 62.5 76.4 60.7  
What the government priorities should be:
Basic Education 1.10 1.04 1.06 1.06 1.06 0.44
Human Rights 1.50 1.40 1.27 1.27 1.32 0.00
Environment quality 1.37 1.35 1.34 1.34 1.34 0.96
Racial. ethnic and religious conflicts 1.67 1.62 1.50 1.54 1.56 0.15
Population growth 1.68 1.68 1.59 1.51 1.60 0.09
World Food Supply 1.91 1.90 1.95 1.91 1.91 0.66
AIDS and other health issues 1.75 2.08 1.85 1.91 1.91 0.01
World Economy 2.31 2.41 2.34 2.23 2.32 0.15
Arms control 2.48 2.39 2.46 2.22 2.38 0.02
Priorities for higher education:
Promoting scholarship and research 1.53 1.23 1.34 1.42 1.32 0.00
helping to resolve basic social problems 1.50 1.37 1.27 1.35 1.34 0.04
Protecting free intellectual enquiry 1.69 1.49 1.49 1.42 1.49 0.03
Preparing students for work 1.43 1.74 1.51 1.66 1.59 0.00
strenghtening international 1.71 1.74 1.82 1.78 1.78 0.65
Preserving cultural heritage 2.02 1.98 1.90 1.83 1.91 0.25
Educating students for leadership 2.14 2.08 2.23 2.24 2.19 0.25
ife-long learning for adults 2.20 2.51 2.18 2.10 2.24 0.00
Status and role of higher education in the country
individuals and business should contribute more 1.41 1.68 1.94 1.62 1.73 0.00
Respect for academics is 1.62 1.68 1.68 2.05 1.77 0.00
effectiveness is threatened by bureaucracies 2.12 1.89 1.92 2.11 1.98 0.15
high education should be available to all that qualify 2.06 2.12 2.27 2.01 2.14 0.31
government should provide free tuition to all 3.06 2.09 1.86 2.49 2.19 0.00
institutions are subject to special interest groups 2.58 2.51 2.21 1.81 2.21 0.00
academics are influential opinion leaders 3.35 3.25 3.10 3.25 3.20 0.51
admission standards should be lowered for disadvanged students 3.92 4.33 4.25 3.78 4.11 0.00
Total 80 177 300 203 760  

The third line on table 29 shows a puzzling finding of the survey: when asked about whether academic freedom is protected in the country, 61.6% of the total sample believe it is not. Other tabulations show that these percentages vary strongly with academic rank - the lower the rank, the highest the belief in the absence of protection to academic freedom. Institutional differences are still stronger: 80.7% of those in state universities outside São Paulo (against 42.8% at the São Paulo university) have the same opinion. There is also a strong correlation with sex: figures for women are consistently higher, as shown in table 30.

Table 30: Percentage who believe that there is no ample protection for academic freedom in Brazil
  State (SP) State (other) Federal Private Total
Women 52.1 90.0 65.3 75.8 69.8
Men 37.8 71.9 47.3 69.6 56.2
Total 42.8 80.7 55.0 71.6 61.6

What is most curious about this question is that, since the end of the military regime in 1985, Brazil has lived a period of complete freedom of expression, and the issue of academic freedom, in its usual sense, has never emerged anywhere. The variations observed on table 30 suggest that this perception, rather than a reflection of reality, is an expression of a general attitude of resentment and mistrust of Brazilian academics regarding the government, which appears more clearly in the sectors that feel more threatened and constrained in their social standing - in one extreme, women at the small state universities (90%), versus, on the other, men at the São Paulo university (37.8%). These differences in gender, more likely than not, are related to the different career patterns of women and men, as discussed before, rather than to an actual situation of oppression on women academics in Brazilian society, which does not seem to exist.

A better understanding of what was meant by "academic freedom" in this context can be achieved through the factor analysis shown on table 31, which brings together several items related to personal influence, institutional management and decision making, academic autonomy and academic freedom. The analysis reveals four clearly distinct factors, one related to autocracy in administration, other to personal influence, and another to academic autonomy. The fourth factor is the one that includes "academic freedom," which is associated with a concern for a stronger voice for students and more faculty involvement in academic matters. This analysis reveals the real content of the complaint about "academic freedom": it is not related to actual constraints on the expression of ideas in academic activity, but to a general yearn for more student and faculty activism in academic matters.

Table 31: Institutional Organization of Academic Activities (factor analysis, varimax rotation)
  Factor I: autocratic administration Factor II: Personal Influence Factor III: Autonomy Factor IV Freedom in teaching
The administration is often autocratic (57D) -.76 -.06 .02 .21
Top-level administrators are providing competent leadership (57A) .75 .08 -.01 .01
Communication between the faculty and the administration is poor (57C) -.75 -.04 .00 .11
I am kept informed about what is going on at this institution (57B) .63 .33 .01 .01
The administration supports academic freedom (57G) .58 .10 .17 -.17
has influence at the level of faculty or school (56B) .15 .89 .04 -.04
has influence at the institutional level (56C) .19 .81 -.03 -.01
has influence at the department level (56A) .05 .79 .12 -.07
Freedom to determine the contents of courses (58A) .01 .07 .74 .06
Freedom to chose any topic for research (58B) -.02 .01 .73 -.18
Freedom to set standards for grading students (58C) .06 .02 .71 -.01
Students should have a stronger voice in determining policy that affects them (57F) -.11 .04 .07 .81
Academic freedom is strongly protected in this country (59) .05 .11 .25 -.59
Lack of Faculty involvement is a real problem (57E) -.48 -.07 .04 .52

Table 29 provides also a general picture of the outlook of Brazilian academics, and the main differences according to the four types. Brazilian academics are mostly concerned with the country's internal problems - basic education, human rights, the economy, social problems. They believe they can contribute to the solution of these issues by strengthening their institutions, and keeping their standards high: they do not endorse lowering the admission standards in their institutions, and are strongly concerned about the priority that should be given to scholarship and research. They give low priority to issues like ethnic conflict, the world economy and arms control, probably for sound reasons: these issues do not affect Brazil directly, and its government could do very little about them anyway.

The consensus among the four groups is high on most items, but there are some clear areas of disagreements as well. We have seen the differences on the belief that academic freedom is not protected. Another item of disagreement is whether the government should keep higher education free for students in public institutions (the current situation) or charge tuition. Although the general tendency in our sample is to support free education, important variations can be observed, going from those with masters' degrees in federal universities (1.5 in a scale of 1 to 5 in favor of free tuition) to full professors in federal and private institutions (3.1). Proposals to introduce tuition in public universities are perceived by many as a denial of the government's responsibility with higher education, and a movement in the direction of bringing higher education under the control of private and elite sectors. The opposite view is that free higher education is an unwarranted public subsidy to the children of upper classes, at the expense of basic education, health and other social needs. In the Brazilian debate, the opposition to tuition in public universities has been a banner of the teacher's unions and student associations, and is usually associated with resistance to policies like evaluation, institutional autonomy and academic accountability, which are all perceived to foster competition and differentiation, and to run against egalitarian values(16).

In comparative terms, liberal professionals of type I are less interested in scholarship and research, the solution of social problems, the protection of free intellectual enquiry, and less worried about bureaucratic encroachment; they also believe, more than the others, that respect for academics is declining. Politically, this group is much more conservative than the middle-level professionals of type III, who are more concerned with human rights, the environment, social conflicts, AIDS and other health issues, the solution of social problems, defend free tuition in public universities, are less interested in increasing the country's international competitiveness and care less for the contribution of businessmen to higher education. Types II and IV tend to occupy intermediate positions on most items, suggesting that these two groups are much less ideologically minded than the others.

Chapter 7. Conclusions.

Of the three professional ideal types listed at the beginning, one is conspicuously absent, and there may be two others which were not predicted. What is missing is the Mandarin. A significant part of the Brazilian professors work for the government, but they do not see themselves, and do not actually play the roles of the "key profession," the embodiment of reason, rationality and competence. Rather, they are split in two groups, a smaller one, more qualified, and closer to the academic model; and a larger one, less qualified, and leaning toward the unionized profession. Of the other two types, those in the first, formed by liberal professionals teaching part time, are not members of the academic profession at all, but of their own fields of specialization. The fourth, those working in the private sector, seem to lack a well-defined professional identity. Their links with higher education are weak, not because they form some kind of intellectual proletariat, but probably because their main professional life lies elsewhere, or is less structured and stable than the usual notion of a profession would lead us to expect.

The general conclusion of this analysis is that the academic profession in Brazil is going through a difficult period, and it doubtful that the current predicaments will find a satisfactory solution in the near future. Only a small section of the professors interviewed, those in Type II, would fit a stricter definition of an academic profession. Those in type I are more linked to their specific professions than to the academic world, and the same can be said of type IV. The most difficult situation is of those of type III. Their condition of "imperfect professionalization" generates high levels of frustration and distortion. They are locked within the higher education profession by their gains in terms of salaries, job stability, retirement benefits and social prestige, which are the result, in many cases, of a rapid process of social mobility. They are unable, however, for personal and institutional limitations, to get the qualifications and resources necessary to a full academic life, and tend to respond with political activism and mistrust.

The conventional expectation about these "imperfections" of the academic profession is that, with time, they would be corrected, and everybody will adjust to the academic mold. The reality seems different. Higher education, everywhere, is being developed in all kinds of institutions, by all kinds of professionals, and attending all kinds of students. The type II academic is probably not a dying species, but it is very unlikely that it will end by absorbing the others. The full implications of this plurality and dispersion are still to be ascertained.

Notes

15. To make the eventual contrasts clearer, we eliminated from table 29 respondents which could fit in two or more types, for instance persons with doctoral degrees in the liberal professions.

16. For an overview, see S. Schwartzman, "Brazil: Opportunity and Crisis in Higher Education," Higher Education, 17, 1 (99-119), 1988.