Coordination of improvement of higher education personnel: regulatory officer field of post-graduate studies in Brazil

Abstract

This paper aims to present a sociological reflection on the role of the Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) as the regulator that institutionalized the field of postgraduate studies in Brazil with public universities. The methodological and theoretical assumptions underpin the theory of the scientific field of Pierre Bourdieu and seek to demonstrate that the CAPES as a political entity linked to the federal government brokered and legitimized the involvement of the holders of teacher-researchers greater symbolic capital (scientific recognition among peers-competitors ), giving them the prerogative to set rules for the evaluation and funding of post-graduate studies. Nevertheless, these legitimate borrowers (dominant) in the field of post-graduate consolidated merit system amalgamated by one academic productivism, establishing universities within a performance culture that brings the trailer individualism, utilitarianism and the casualization of labor and relations in the university field.