PEC 206/2019, authored by federal deputy General Peternelli (PSL-SP), with rapporteurship by Kim Kataguiri (União-SP), is pending in the CCJ of the Chamber of Deputies, which will allow the collection of tuition fees for wealthy students in public universities.
The issue requires a constitutional amendment, as our Constitution —”a camel designed by constituents who dreamed of giving birth to a gazelle”, in the genius of Roberto Campos — provides for free access to all. There is no such thing as a free lunch — or higher education — for free. All gratuity provided for by the Magna Carta is paid with taxes taken from Brazilians, in general the simplest, which make up most of the aggregate collection.
Even without realizing it, the poor pay for the tuition of the rich student at the public university. And that cost is very high. According to the study “A Fair Fit – Analysis of the Efficiency and Equity of Public Spending in Brazil (World Bank, 2017)”, the cost per student in public universities is about three times higher than the cost per student in private universities. More: this high cost is not reflected in a higher added value for graduates of public universities compared to graduates of other universities. Worse, the World Bank points to a high level of inefficiency, such that the results obtained by federal universities could be achieved with about 17% less resources.
In short, all Brazilians pay dearly for inefficient public higher education with low added value.
The PEC is causing hysteria on the far left, which prefers that the poor continue to pay higher education for the rich. Guilherme Boulos tweeted: “They want an increasingly elitist, unequal university and only for those who can afford it.”
It’s the opposite!
The current “free” system, not the PEC, is elitist and unequal: public universities are full of students with financial means. It is a perpetual motion of inequality of opportunity. Today, only 18% of young people aged 18 to 24 in the country are in higher education, generally the richest.
The World Bank reinforces that, “although students at federal universities do not pay for their education, more than 65% of them belong to the richest 40% of the population”. And the cost per student increased by 5% per year between 2010 and 2015 (study cut-off date).
Society — in practice the poorest — subsidizes students who would have the financial means to attend a private university. If there was a charge for these at the public university, many would choose to study at the private university, freeing up precious vacancies. It is, therefore, reasonable to imagine that part of the vacancies in public universities occupied by high-income students would be taken by the poorest.
As Roberto Campos said on the subject during the Constituent Assembly: “Rich children, exempt from working and able to pay for pre-college courses, qualify to land, in their own car, at public universities, while the poor pay their night school tuition at private universities”.
The collection of the monthly fee for Faria Lima e Leblon, if duly tied to the final wording of the PEC, will represent a fundamental support for the cost of the monthly fees of needy students. In its current wording, the text foresees that it would be up to the MEC to define the cut-off line for the enrollment fee, which seems to be a lot of power for a single pen. Better would be a legislative definition, or the university’s discretion in face of local realities.
Anyway, it is a great opportunity that Congress has for a greater inclusion of poor students, which PT and PSOL do not admit.
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