The institutions' source of resources must be maintained
Vahan Agopyan, Marcelo Knobel and Sandro Valentini
Deans of USP, Unicamp and Unesp, respectively
The three public universities in the state of São Paulo - USP, Unicamp and Unesp - constitute one of São Paulo's greatest assets. Financed with resources from state ICMS revenue, they excellently fulfill their mission of training highly qualified people, promoting scientific and technological advancement, and transferring the results of their research to society in the form of new products, services and public policies. .
It is necessary for the population of São Paulo to understand the strategic importance of the activities that these universities carry out in the 31 cities in the State in which they are present. And vehemently defend the maintenance of the conditions that have guaranteed the success of the three universities.
Fighting in favor of São Paulo state governments means fighting in favor of São Paulo and Brazil, to whose social and economic development they have been contributing for decades in an intense and decisive way.
USP, Unicamp and Unesp make up a cohesive, robust and efficient higher education system. Together, they offer the highest quality training to approximately 117 thousand undergraduate students and almost 62 thousand postgraduate students, they account for 35% of national scientific production and provide fundamental services to the populations of São Paulo and other states, especially in the area of health. It is no surprise, therefore, that the main specialized international rankings classify them among the best universities in Latin America.
Maintaining an excellent higher education system like São Paulo is expensive anywhere in the world. Therefore, we must praise the effort that USP, Unicamp and Unesp have been making to operate with deficit budgets without compromising the quality of their teaching, research and extension activities.
In the last five years, the expenses of the three universities exceeded the transfers received from the state government by 20%, on average. The solution has been to cut expenses, seek more efficient ways to use available resources and generate additional revenue through the provision of services and the establishment of partnerships with the public and private sectors.
The so-called endowment funds, whose association with public institutions has just been authorized by provisional measure, present themselves as an interesting additional source of stable and long-term financing for São Paulo state companies. This does not mean, however, that they should stop fighting for more resources from the state Treasury.
The government of São Paulo has allocated the same 9,57% of state ICMS revenue to its universities since 1995. It turns out that the three institutions have grown considerably in these almost 25 years, both in physical area and in the number of courses offered and students enrolled. . At undergraduate level alone, the number of students increased by 75,7% at USP, 98,8% at Unicamp and 93,7% at Unesp.
If it wants to maintain the national lead in terms of human resources training, scientific advancement, technological innovation and entrepreneurship, it is essential that the state of São Paulo values its public universities and guarantees them budgets compatible with their current size and with the complexity of these institutions.
In times of majority and proportional elections, of speeches against free public higher education and threats of cutting government resources for science and technology, the population of São Paulo must always keep in mind the transformative force of the three universities that it helps to fund through the ICMS. Supporting USP, Unicamp and Unesp is supporting the development of São Paulo and Brazil.
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(Folha de S. Paul. 17/9/2018, Page A3, Trends)
