"In my entire career here, I have never encountered such a serious crisis. " Denise Carvalho, president of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), 55, almost 40 of whom was a student and then a professor, was alarmed. There is the coronavirus, which forced the faculty to suspend all its courses for two weeks from Monday March 16, while the start of the academic year in the southern hemisphere took place a week earlier. But there is especially Jair Bolsonaro.
Along with culture and the environment, education is a prime target for the far-right president. In 2020, the total budget of the Ministry of Education was reduced by 17% compared to the previous year, from 124 to 103 billion reais (19 billion euros). An unprecedented dive.
The hardest cuts have targeted 68 federal public universities, some of which have lost a quarter or even a third of their endowments. "We had to adapt: we are paying the water and electricity bills three months late. We no longer wash common areas. No more handling work is done. We stopped all the cars and all the function phones, postponed certain exams, cut back on travel, conferences, events… ”, painfully lists Mme Carvalho, who saw his budget cut from "30 to 33%".
"In sociology and anthropology, everything is frozen"
The UJRJ is Brazil’s largest public higher education institution: 67,000 students, 4,200 teachers, 1,500 research laboratories and 45 libraries. It is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. It has welcomed such illustrious students as the architect Oscar Niemeyer and the writer Jorge Amado.
But today, it is painful to see: the huge campus on the island of Fundão, in the north of Rio, looks like a bankrupt industrial city. Abandoned gardens, scattered garbage cans, ripped sidewalks, unfinished construction sites plagued by rust … Even the beautiful building of the rectorate, "flagship" designed on stilts by disciples of Le Corbusier, is in a bad state: the upper floors, ravaged in 2016 by fire, have never been rehabilitated. The ceilings are studded with infiltrations. The large patio windows, broken here and there, are filled with sad wooden panels.
At the time of the extreme right, all educational programs are suffering: in 2019, 7,590 research and study grants were cut. "In sociology and anthropology, it is particularly hard. It is impossible to make long-term plans. Everything is frozen ”, regrets Michel Misse, a 69-year-old sociologist and living memory of the University. This warm and francophile man, specialist in urban violence, assembled a team of 18 researchers to compare the situation of the prisons, between Rio and Sao Paulo. "We need barely 400,000 reais (74,000 euros), but we only got 10%. So, we revise the project downwards, we work without money, without being paid ”, he says. For this type of work, there is no alternative: "Public universities represent more than 95% of scientific production in Brazil", recalls Mr. Misse, adding: " It's hard to believe, but their plan is to simply cut down on intellectual production in Brazil. "
