A subsunção da universidade pública ao setor mineral: a experiência da Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto

• Autor(a) principal: Rafaela Campos Duarte Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFMG
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1843/70698
• topic: Capitalismo; Setor mineral; Universidade pública; Privatização da educação superior; Educação; Ensino superior - Minas Gerais; Escolas de mineração; Minas e mineração - Minas Gerais; Capitalismo e educação; Privatização; Setor mineral; Universidade pública

This research investigates and analyzes the relationship between the School of Mines at the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto (UFOP) and the mineral sector, from 1995 to 2022, and its implications for the knowledge produced at/by the university. The UFOP School of Mines, located in the city of Ouro Preto and region, the locus of this study, is a national reference in mineralogical, geological and metallurgical studies and has been promoting the training of professionals, especially in the area of engineering, to work in the job market. . The established time frame includes the implementation of the Brazilian State Reform and the continuous application of austerity measures that impacted, among other areas, both public higher education and also the mining area in Brazil, leading to the privatization of a large state-owned company, Vale do Rio Doce, today called Vale S. A. The research is anchored in the social theory of Karl Marx and included bibliographic and documentary research. The bibliographic research aimed to analyze the contribution of studies undertaken on the researched topic. The documentary research consisted of three stages, being: (i) Study of the main national legislation that characterized and reformed higher education in Brazil, between the years 1995 and 2022; (ii) Study of the main legislation at national and state level, in Minas Gerais, which structured mining activity, seeking to analyze the definition of mining recommended by the legal apparatus, since the approval of the Minas Code, in 1934, until the present day; (iii) Selection and analysis of regulations, documents, minutes and resolutions internal to UFOP and Escola de Minas, which dealt with the implementation of science, technology and innovation (S,T&I) policy at the university, the partnerships established between the institution and private companies that operate in the mining field, in addition to documents that demonstrate the meaning and organization of teaching work at the UFOP School of Mines. It is considered that, under the impulse of imperialism, education, in particular public higher education, has been undergoing consecutive reforms that have impacted financing, management, academic and social function, the production of knowledge and its purpose, and the organization of teaching work, consolidating a new model of commercial university. Mining in Brazil, in turn, has been increasing its production scale and profitability, following the growth in the prices of mineral commodities on the international market. This process favored the attraction of international corporations, which promoted rapid expansion of projects in new regions of the country, in addition to intensifying mineral exploration in historically mined regions. The study concludes that the Brazilian public university is a driver of current capitalist development, being an instrument of direct production of financial capital, through the establishment of projects, partnerships and agreements, whose main objective is the transfer of knowledge produced at the public university to the private sector. UFOP's experience proves this assertion, with an emphasis on the mineral sector. The strong articulation of this university with the productive sector, in a process of encouraging the construction of joint proposals between companies, teachers and students, corroborates the commodification of public higher education, fueling the strengthening of capitalism and its accumulation. The evidence gathered indicates that, under multiple government and business measures and with the support of teachers, UFOP is subsumed into the mineral sector.