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.


3. Who are the academics?

a. Professional qualifications and employment

A first overview of the results of the Brazilian survey can be seen on tables 2 and 3. Because of the 1968 university reform, full-time employment for professors increased significantly in the public sector, but their academic qualifications, expressed in the percentage of persons holding doctoral degrees or full professorships, lagged behind. If we take these two elements, a doctor's degree and full-time employment, as the main preconditions to belong to an "academic profession" in the traditional sense of the term, then only about 30% of those interviewed qualify. To some extent, to be or not a member of this group depends on the professors' field of knowledge and specialization. Not surprisingly, those in the "sciences" - physical, biological and social - show higher levels of academic qualification and full-time employment than those in the professions - engineering, health, social and technical professions. Table 3 shows that, in spite of the importance of the field of knowledge, the main determinant of whether a person can have a permanent, full-time job, and earn a doctoral degree, is the type of institution where he or she works. The "percentage of errors" column in tables 2 and 3 suggest that about 46% of the Brazilian professorate are "misplaced," in the sense that they either have a full-time job without an academic qualification, or are qualified but with part-time employment. The number of qualified persons without stable jobs in our sample is very small, less than 6% of the total. Most "errors" refer to persons with stable, and often full-time jobs, without the proper qualifications. Table 3 shows that the highest levels of "errors" are in the federal and state universities outside São Paulo.

Table 2: Doctoral degrees and full-time contracts by field (survey data)
  % with doctoral degrees or full professorships % with full-time contracts % of "errors* Total (N)
% N
Physical sciences 48.0 83.7 41.7 12.9 123
Biological Sciences 31.7 73.3 55.1 11.0 105
Social Sciences 27.1 52.9 39.7 7.3 70
Humanities 28.7 59.1 41.2 14.3 137
Engineering 15.5 33.6 39.7 14.0 134
Health professions 38.7 46,8 53.4 19.5 186
social professions 29.9 38.6 44.0 9.2 88
technical professions 16.7 40.6 44.4 3.2 34
education 16.0 55.0 50.6 8.4 80
Total 30.2 54.2 46.0 100% 964
*Percentage of doctors with full time employment plus non-doctors with part-time employment on the total




Table 3: Doctoral degrees and full-time contracts by type of institution
  % with doctoral degrees and full professorships % with full-time contracts % of "errors"* Total (N)
% N
State (São Paulo) 68.5 74.8 16.4 15.5 149
State (others) 8.4 70.6 69.2 11.1 107
Federal 30.3 72.5 67.5 41.8 403
Private 18.0 15.1 23.9 31.6 305
Total 30.2 54.2 46.0 100% 964
*Percentage of doctors with full time employment plus non-doctors with part-time employment on the total

Another aspect of academic employment in Brazil is the high percentage of persons with full-time, permanent appointments in public institutions, as shown in table 4. Public universities are part of the civil service, and their professors have the same privileges, including job stability, than any other public employee. In the federal system, full time and stability are generalized, irrespective of degree, while the São Paulo university retained a moderate association between full employment and academic rank. Private institutions, on the other extreme, kept full employment down.

Table 4. Percentage of professors with full-time and stable contracts, by institution and academic degrees.
  State (SP) Sate (others) Federal Private Total
Undergraduate 30,8% 60,9% 95,2% 16,0% 47,2%
Specialization 40,0% 77,5% 97,1% 24,3% 63,4%
Masters Degree 32,0% 82,4% 95,8% 26,9% 70,4%
Doctor's degree 64,3% 62,5% 93,6% 29,4% 71,8%
Associate or full professor 85,5% 100% 96,3% 50,0% 82,9%
Total 59,1% 74,5% 95,5% 24,0% 65,5%
(N) (149) (106) (396) (287) (938)

Table 5 gives additional information about employment patterns. Those working in basic sciences and the humanities, and in public universities, tend to derive most of their income from their main academic institution, while the figures for the social and professional sciences and technology, and for the private sector, are significantly lower. Part-time work, however, is not restricted to the private sector. The São Paulo system, and the Federal system in a smaller degree, place a relatively high emphasis on the physical sciences, health sciences and engineering, and in the latter two there is a high proportion of part-timers.

Table 5: Percentage of earnings deriving from professional work (averages):
  From this institution from other academic sources from non-academic work
A) Type of Institution:
State (São Paulo) 77.4 5.8 15.9
State (others) 77.0 6.2 16.0
Federal 14.5 5.5 19.3
Private 37.9 16.1 42.4
       
B) Fields of knowledge
Basic and Natural Sciences 80.3 8.3 10.7
Social sciences and professions 50.3 9.3 34.1
Humanities and literature 72.4 10.9 15.3
Technology 50.2 11.6 37.6
Health sciences and professions 52.1 5.7 38.4


b. Social origins and mobility

The emergence of professions is usually associated with processes of upward mobility of specific groups, and this is partially true also for academics in Brazil. In our survey, while 33.7% of the professorate had fathers with only four years of primary education or less, the fathers of another 34.5% had university degrees. So, while for half the academics a university position meant a significant mobility through education, for the other half it was just the reinstatement of their family's social standing. Status differences among disciplines are not very large. There are more children of parents with little education in the basic and health sciences than in other fields, and more children of parents with university degrees in technology than in the rest.

More significant than differences in field are differences among institutions. State and federal institutions have the largest percentage of persons coming from lower social strata, while the São Paulo university and (contrary to common belief) private institutions recruit at higher social levels. This pattern reflects, in turn, a regional phenomena: intergenerational mobility is much lower in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo than in the states of Minas Gerais, Bahia and Mato Grosso do Sul. The reason is that higher education institutions in the former regions are older, and there is a larger pool of educated families for the recruitment of academics.

We can say, in short, that public institutions outside the main centers, which are also newer, have been a preferred ground for social mobility through a university career. Not by coincidence, appointment requisites for these institutions are less demanding, as expressed in the lower qualification of their staff. But they provide job stability, retirement benefits, salaries that are fairly competitive, and more secure, than what one could get in the private market outside the top positions in the prestigious careers.



The modest social origins of so many academics helps to explain why Brazilian professors tend to relate mostly to their own country, with limited international links. A broader explanation is that, as citizens of a continental-size state, Brazilians tend to be more self-centered than people living in small countries, with more lively frontiers(7). Except of those in the higher academic ranks, they have little contact with institutions abroad. (8) Only 17.3% ever worked with a foreign colleague in a research project, and only 18% went abroad for study or research in the last ten years (the figures for those with a doctor's degree are 41.3% and 59.1%). When asked, they agree that "connections with scholars in other countries are very important for my professional work" (1.5 in average in a scale of 1 to 5), that "a scholar must read books and journals published abroad to keep abreast of his discipline" (1.3), and that "universities should do more to promote international mobility" (1.2). They are less certain, however, about the need to give to the curriculum of their institution a stronger international focus (2.2).

c. Gender

The process of social mobility associated with the expansion of the professorate is strongly related to the number of women and their distribution among different fields, and other special characteristics. About 40% of the professorate are women, a remarkable figure considering that, still in the sixties, women were a small minority among higher education students (today they are about 40%)(9). The differences in sex correspond, in part, to differences in age and academic status. More than 80% of full professors are men, compared with only 55% of the assistants. Women are not only younger than men in our sample, but they start their careers in average two years earlier. Compared with men, women are significantly more associated with an incongruent occupational position. They remain more at the master level, not getting the doctoral degrees; they are more likely to work full time at the university; and earn significantly less. They are also concentrated in the humanities and in education, while engineering is an almost exclusively masculine field. The main differences among sexes are summarized in table 6 and graphics 3.

Table 6: Age, year when started academic work, age when started, income and academic degree, by sex
  Women Men
Year of birth 1947.39 1950.72
year started academic work 1979,58 1977,56
age when started 28,87 30,07
% with less than US$10,000 a year 67,9% 47,0%
% with more than US$ 25,000 a year 6.0% 16,0%
% with full-time contracts 66,6% 36,5%
% with masters' degrees (no Ph.D) 38.9% 23.2%
% with doctor's degrees 20.0% 22,6% 
% of "errors" 53.1% 41.5%


These data suggest a peculiar pattern of social mobility for women in Brazil. Rather than competing with men in the marketplace and in the traditional careers, they concentrate in the humanities and education, work to move up the academic ladder earning at least their masters' degrees, and get full-time employment in public, mostly federal, universities. The tendency for men, in contrast, is either to try to climb the highest ranks of the academic career or remain outside it altogether, with a part-time job and most of their professional investments outside the academic institutions.

A deeper understanding of these patterns is provided by graphics 4 to 7, which shows the evolution of academic appointments to higher education institutions from the years before 1967 to the present. Before 1967, most professors were hired either in the health or in the basic sciences, with only a small fraction in technology. In the eighties, technology took about 30% of the new jobs, followed by the humanities and the social sciences (together, these two remain the largest group) (graphics 4). In terms of institutions, the federal system expanded until the late seventies, and then stopped hiring new professors, while the private sector took its place (graphics 5). More than 80% of the professors appointed before 1967 were men, but in the 1968-70 the number of women entering the profession was almost 50%. Graphics 6 and 7 show that, while the proportion of women entering the academic profession followed the availability of places in the federal system, the pattern for men was closer to that of the private sector. A possible interpretation is that men take the jobs they can get, while women have more flexibility, and retract from the academic job market if the places available are not the best.




d. income and social esteem

Table 7 gives the income figures of the professorate by type of institution. The dollar figures are difficult to compare internationally, because of problems of exchange rates and internal costs in local currency. The highest incomes are of those with the highest academic degrees, part time work and in the State of São Paulo - presumably liberal professionals occupying prestige positions in their careers. The typical Ph. D. working full-time earns between ten and 25 thousand dollars a year. At the time of the survey, the lowest salaries were those of the private and state universities outside São Paulo, which is in part a reflection of the limited number of professors with full-time contracts in these places. Still, of those with less than 5 thousand dollars a year, about 40% had full-time contracts, the same percentage as those on the upper bracket (the percentage for the intermediate groups is about 60%).

Table 7: Yearly income from academic work (percentages in each class)
  Up to US$5,000.00 between 5 and 10,000 between 10 and 25,000 more than 15,000
By institutional setting
State (SP) 10,1 20,1 51,0 12,1
State (other) 47,1 42,3 7,7 2,9
Federal 234 32,7 35,3 8.6
Private 31,8 22,4 29,2 16,6
By academic degree:
undergraduate 44,2 24,9 18,8 12,2
specialization 41,2 32,0 21,5 5,0
Master's degree 24,0 40,7 28,4 6,9
Doctor's degree 6,8 18,4 56,8 18,0
Full or associate professor 7,9 15,8 46,1 30,3
Total 26,6 28,5 32,8 12.2

A salary of twenty-five thousand dollars a year in Brazil allows for a comfortable middle-class standard of life, if combined with consulting, other forms of additional work, or in two-income families. However, with inflation rates of twenty to 40% a month, which has been the pattern in Brazil in the last several years, a good salary one month can turn into a totally inadequate one a few weeks later. Real salaries for professors in the federal system have declined in the recent years, because of delayed or inadequate readjustments for inflation; the same applies to the state systems(10). Extended strikes of professors have occurred regularly in the federal system and eventually in the others, leading to short-time salary increases, but creating a climate of lack of motivation and low morale in their institutions. The dissatisfaction of professors with their salaries is expressed on the first two lines of table 7: most professors see their salaries as poor, and worse, they see the future bleaker than the present

However, the job situation of university professors, and most specially of those in public institution, is better than of other persons with similar educational backgrounds. The salary is declining, but so are most salaries in a period of economic stagnation. And the benefits of job stability, extended vacations, a light work load and early retirement with full salary are impossible to get in the private sector. The complaints and resentment of the academics with their salaries are due not so much to their relative position in society, but to their perception that their social standing is diminishing: social respect for their work is declining, and they do not see themselves as significant influentials. In spite of this feeling of frustration, they do not expect to leave their institutions within the next five years, although many of them think they could do it if they wished. In aggregate terms, this thought is clearly not realistic.

Table 8: evaluation of income earned, job attitudes and social standing of the profession, by institution (mean values)
  State (SP) State (others) Federal Private
How would you rate your own academic salary? (1: excellent; 4: poor) 3.2 3.4 3.3 3.1
How would you rate the prospects of improvement in the coming five years (1-4) 3.5 3.8 3.6 3.2
How do you evaluate your retirement benefits? (1-5) 2.3 3.8 2.6 4.2
Academics are among the most influential opinion leaders (1: agree; 5: disagree) 3.2 3.2 3.1 3.2
respect of academics is declining (1-5) 2.0 1.4 1.7 2.0
If you left this institution, how easy it would be for you to find another professional, non academic alternative (1: very easy; 5: very difficult) 2.2 2.7 2.4 2.2
If you left this institution, how easy it would be for you to find another professional, academic alternative (1-5)  1.9 2.8 2.4 2.5
How likely is it that you will leave this institution in the next five years? (1: very likely; 5:very unlikely). 4.1 3.3 3.9 3.4

e. Between job security and retrenchment.

The general picture that emerges from this data is of a social group that, in a few years, has attained a relatively secure and prestigious position in society, and now feels threatened by declining salaries and low social esteem. For a significant part of the group, their position was obtained without meeting the intellectual and professional requirements which are usually associated with an academic profession. By international standards, most Brazilian academics are not well qualified. Their degrees are insufficient, they are not trained to do research, and they would have difficulty surviving in an environment of increased demand and competition. Although they complain about the salaries, their perception of alternatives is not strong enough to prompt a movement to change jobs. This is a difficult position, leading to a situation of retrenchment which reflects both on the handling of daily professional chores and in the general outlook the professors have about their place in society.



Notes

7. In spite of is large territory, Brazil is very isolated geographically, its only busy frontiers being those in the South.

8. Important exceptions, which do not appear in our sample, are some universities in the South, such as the Universidade de Santa Catarina and of Rio Grande do Sul, which have a great number of German descents in their ranks, and keep active links with German institutions.

9. The Carnegie study shows that Brazil in particular and Latin American generally has a much higher proportion of women in the academic profession than other countries.

10. Jacques Schwartzman, Universidades Federais no Brasil: uma avaliação de suas trajetórias (décadas de 70 e 80), Universidade de São Paulo, NUPES, Documento de Trabalho 4/93, p. 18.