Initial Thoughts

The role of the World Bank (WB) has attracted attention on the definition of processes of elaboration, implementation and evaluation of educational policies among its member-states. Other than that, research on this subject has shown the growing advance of this global entity into public debate on the aforementioned educational policies. Academic work published on the Brazilian context study from primary to tertiary education levels, with less focus on the latter.

There are research projects showing the number of economic resources moved by Latin-American countries, partially from the WB, pointing to tertiary education projects (^{Santos, 2014}; 2017; ^{Pereira, 2010a}). Such projects revolve around many themes, such as Science, Technology and Innovation; or the “relieve” of poverty in vulnerable communities (Pereira, 2010b). As there is a WB sector responsible for its involvement on tertiary education, it is believed that Brazilian researchers are aware of such activities and its consequences on the field’s configuration.

With this in mind, and considering the relevance of a systematic comprehension, organically considering the characterization of such influences, this paper’s goal is to present an outlook of Brazilian academic research focused on the WB actions on the field of tertiary education in Latin America, all published as master’s dissertations and Ph.D. theses. This work can be defined as a state of the art, aiming to bring new questions on the theme.

The relevance of “state of the art” research to understanding the field of tertiary education

Due to the amount of works on the tertiary education, it is challenging to find new possibilities for contributions. Therefore, the development of a state of the art can show the relevance and innovation intended over the matter that it privileges. This methodological stand aims to contribute to scientific knowledge, while communicating with the field’s academic work.

This work has as its main goal the organization of the debate for a better comprehension. The knowledge of academic research on the relation between the WB and the tertiary education is a sine qua non condition for the understanding of the results of this international organization’s role in education. “State of the art” research can help in mapping investigation, as it facilitates the presentation of a specific theme and its contextualization (^{Maia; Hobold, 2014}).

Bibliographical research allows reaching and evaluating the depths and limits of studies on tertiary education. It is used to “[...] answer the questions of “when”, “where”, and “who” makes these research in a specific time and place, [also] those questions that answer “what” and “how” the works are done” (^{Ferreira, 2002}, p. 265, our translation). As ^{Morosini and Nascimento (2017}) understand, researchers live in a specific time and are influenced by their context, what is reflected onto their academic scientific work.

For Romanowsky and Ens (2006), “state of the art” is not the same as “state of knowledge”. The first names the whole of the work (papers published in journals, dissertations, thesis, annals), the latter only represents research into one source of clutter of publications (into annals, dissertations, or theses, for example). The main question raised by the authors is: “is it possible to write a “state of the art” comprising all that is possible to know over what someone has already written over a subject?”

After research on national and international bases, ^{Vosgerau and Romanowski (2014}) identified several kinds of studies that can be classified as “revision studies”, such as: bibliographical survey, literature review, bibliographical review, state of the art, narrative review, bibliometric study, systematic review, integrative review, metanalysis, meta summarization, and a synthesis of qualitative evidence.

The authors add that: “[...] studies that have as their goal to make such revision allow for a better understanding of the areas movement, configuration, theorical and methodologic propensions, critical analysis pointing tendencies, recurrences and gaps” (^{Vosgerau; Romanowski, 2014}, p. 167, our translation). Through reading their work, it is made clear that both concepts are not always synonyms, each of them have their own expressions and characteristics. But it can be said that “state of the art” is not considered as being distinct from “state of knowledge”.

^{Ferreira (2002}), ^{Morosini (2015}), Morosini and ^{Nascimento (2017}) state that “systematic review of literature”, “state of the art”, and “state of knowledge” are synonyms, because “[...] state of knowledge is the identification, register and categorization that takes into account the synthesis of scientific production over a specific field, in a said space of time, uniting journals, theses, dissertations and books on a specific matter” (Morosini, 2015, p. 102, our translation).

“State of the art” was adopted in this work as it is closer to its aims. Therefore, this paper privileges the term of “state of the art” to describe written dissertations and theses. It is worth noting that it relates to the attempt of pointing “[...] consensus and divergences” (^{Nascimento, 2016}, p. 6, our translation) in the development of knowledge on Brazilian education over the influence of international entities.

The State of the art is a kind of investigation aiming to restore, organize and detail how information on a specific theme is spread (^{Jezine, 2014}). Well-made works with this goal “[...] help in the identification of choices, tendencies of thought, approaches, etc. used by the researchers of educational policies” (^{Souza, 2014}, p. 360, our translation)¹. More than that, literature review about the chosen subject grants the researcher the possibility of investigating social phenomena while needing continuous epistemological watchfulness (^{Bourdieu; Chamboredon; Passeron, 2015}).

Such works enable the development of reviews over what was published in the field of interest (^{Romanowski; Ens, 2006}), reaching a stocking and descriptive procedure of the theme it privileges (^{Ferreira, 2002}; ^{Maia; Hobold, 2014}). They promote an overview of the knowledge on the field of education (^{Newman; Gough, 2020}).

To Barreto (2009, p. 496), “facing the fragmentation of studies, journal balances in works [“state of the art” research] are playing an inestimable role […]” Taking it into account enables the analysis of contributions on the object, with the point of characterizing the field of research, while contributing theoretically and methodologically to it (^{Vosgerau; Romanowski, 2014}, our translation).

A gathering of works through this state of the art has as its purpose to show the originality of this thesis. Although, it doesn’t mean to follow a “myth of the originality of knowledge” (^{Ferreira, 2002}), that would characterize a search for something never seen in this field of research. The goal here is to present a view of the object through another paradigm allowed by the current socio-historical-political context.

This investigation of scientific production has as its starting point master’s dissertations and PhD. theses, considering that graduate programmes of tertiary education institutions are a privileged place for questioning their social reality, through conducted research. The elaboration of this state of the art resulted on the identification of the reasons that took the themes to the field of tertiary education, in the same way that it also pointed to how such themes can center the dispute between the field’s agents.

To better understand the reasons why the texts studied were written and their respective characteristics, it is relevant to keep in mind ^{Azevedo’s and Aguiar’s (2001}, p. 52, our translation) words:

The perplex, anguishing search for new concepts and categories that allow the understanding of reality dynamics - in a field of knowledge that still lacks an institutional tradition - to recur for the denouncement, for an intense politicization of studies, are practices that can only be understood when related to the wider e social context where they are inserted and articulated.

Even though reviews - always bibliographical - enable the comparison between researches (^{Vosgerau; Romanowski, 2014}), especially state of the art (^{André; et al, 1999}), the goal here was not to compare a said “greater or smaller relevance” of one in relation to the latter. It was, otherwise, to describe the authors’ goals and main findings on the acting of the WB on Latin American soil. While presenting this state of knowledge, it is accepted that it can’t show the whole of the production on the relations between States and the WB in tertiary education, but we will show “one of the possible stories”² about it.

State of Art of research on the WB role in Brazilian tertiary education: a general view

To delimitate the state of the art, a search for academic works was conducted on the website of the Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações (BDTD). BDTD is representative in what concerns the reunion of Brazilian theses and dissertations - including all of the country’s graduate programmes -, as it is required that all programmes linked to Fundação Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) feed the library with all of its publications, to disseminate published knowledge.

While redating a state of the art of the knowledge about the WB’s actions on Latin American tertiary education, we recurred to theses and dissertations published in Brazil. We also looked for works from other countries, but no websites capable of offering an overview of master’s and PhD. works were found. Therefore, there are no national libraries of theses and dissertations in other Latin American countries, such as in Brazil. Because of that, a data collection was made regarding only authors coming from Brazilian graduate programmes.

The key terms for the research were: Tertiary Education, World Bank/World institutions and Latin America. All work containing these words in their title, abstract and/or keywords were selected. In situations where the term “International institutions” appeared along the others, only works related with the WB were chosen. It is worth noting that papers focusing in more than one Latin American country, without necessarily using the term “Latin America”, were also selected as part of this research.

The context chosen goes from the first published work (thesis or dissertation), in 2001, until the year of 2020³. All works should deal with tertiary education and the acting of the WB in this field, to take the analysis to Latin America - relating to two or more countries from this region. All the texts found were analyzed through the Content Analysis (^{Bardin, 2011}), following syntactic and semantic criteria, with material exploration and treating of the results, inferences and interpretation.

It is relevant to point that much research published dealing with tertiary education work with the problem of the agency of international institutions. Although almost all of them doesn’t center their work around the international institutions. In other words, such institutions, and more specifically the WB, are only marginal in these works: they are considered as important players in building and interfering on the studied policies, without being the focus of such research.

Otherwise, it would be impossible to exactly describe all individual or collective contributions on the educational discussion over the WB. But it is worth pointing that most of the texts studied are not written around the WB’s role but treat it as a secondary subject in relation to other specific educational themes.

With the use of theme descriptors and time context of research, six dissertations and four theses about the matter were found. But, after reading of the title, the abstract and the content of the texts, we concluded that four of the dissertations and three of the theses did indeed study the acting of the WB in Latin America tertiary education - as shown in the boards 1 and 2, works not dealing with the theme in question are labeled as “non-containing”.

It is equally relevant to observe the regional distribution of graduate programmes - and, by extension, of authors of the dissertations and theses on the main theme. The graphic 1 explains that there were two published works from the Northeast, four from the Southeast, and one from the South. The Mid-West and North regions do not have any master’s or Ph.D. works focusing on the theme. The abundance or lack of research in these localities show the interests moving the field in such realities.

Source: Made by the author, with resources available in the Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações (BDTD).

Graphic 1: Regional distribution of dissertations and theses on the matter of the WBs role in Latin American tertiary education 

Through these findings, it is important to remember Romanowsky and Ens’s (2006) point when they assert that the act of mapping what has been published in an area equals defending the scientific area, by pointing failures, or recognizing suggestions and solutions already hinted to answer existing problems. It sums that with the aspect of the “gender of the researcher” that wrote the dissertation of the thesis. The graphic 2 reveals that five of them (71%) are female and two of them (29%) male.

Source: Made by the author, with resources available in the Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações (BDTD).

Graphic 2: Gender of the dissertation/thesis’s authors 

The low number of dissertations and theses that work directly with the matter shows that researchers are more adept of using the “idea of an existing participation”, but without privileging the WB as an object of research - a fast search over the BDTD`s domain can easily prove that there are various texts citing the WB as relevant to the development of an idea of tertiary education, especially after the 90s. Although, this information is more often used as secondary to an analysis of another theme.

Bibliographical research enabled the access, mapping, systematizing and revision of what was made about the interference of the WB over Latin American tertiary education. The analysis of the dissertations and theses is presented below.

State of Art of Brazilian research on the role of the WB in tertiary education: the case of master’s dissertations

The first dissertation found resulted of the work of ^{Reis (2001}), where he characterizes the influences of globalization over reforms that took place in South American countries and explores their impact on the organization of public universities. The research privileges Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, to understand how tertiary education was transformed in Latin America through the WB’s proposals and others coming from MERCOSUR’s triennial plan, aiming the implementation of MERCOSUR-Educational.

The author’s hypothesis is that MERCOSUR countries proposals are directed to the WB proposal, defending a university - and a tertiary education system as a whole - based on neoliberal ideas. By placing the WB as an engine for globalization, of neoliberalism and, consequently, of reforms affecting tertiary education, ^{Reis (2001}) dictates an experience of an imposition of policies by this international institution. She further adds that the WB’s logic is responsible to dismantle tertiary systems, while also conducting an economic and productive restructuration following the neoliberal model in cultural and educational aspects.

The author concludes by claiming that MERCOSUR-Educational is, indirectly, influenced by WB’s ideas, because countries that form it implement its notions on their national plans, even if the structuring proposals from MERCOSUR-Educational, signed by the countries, are against those of the Bank. Therefore, according to ^{Reis (2001}), there are four motions suggested by the WB to the field: differentiation, diversification of financing, redefinition of the government’s function, and emphasis in quality and equity. Then, countries are pushing MERCOSUR-Educational to fit what was already adopted by them individually, which can be related with the WB’s guidance over its inside plans. Therefore, there would be an indirect influence from the WB in the project MERCOSUR-Educational.

The second dissertation was written by ^{Maffra (2011}), organized around the “epistemic communities” that, according to her, are groups of subjects of a specific area, responsible to shape policies to their respective field. In her research, Maffra (2011) privileges the Brazilian and Argentinian examples, to systematize how C&T reforms were made through the financing of the WB. In addition, the text points to the influence of the agents from the scientific field on the delimitation of projects to be financed by the organization.

^{Paiva (2016}) resumes, in her writing, the history of structural changes that happened in the end of the 90s in Latin America, to express the fight of college syndicates against neoliberal trends. The role of international organizations is characterized as a fuel for the reforms that inserted Latin American countries in the margins of the international division of labor.

Through this perspective, the lesser value given to the teaching job, and consequently its diminishing payment, results from the WB’s guidance for the field, through its documents. ^{Paiva (2016}) also points to the need of a greater integration between syndicates and associations of college professors, united towards unifying the fight for better rights for workers - specially in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.

In his dissertation, ^{Nascimento (2017}) discuss the globalization of Brazilian tertiary education, specifically paying attention to the professors’ basic formation. During his work, he emphasizes the process of globalization and neo liberalization of economy and, mainly, how it has forced a highly specialized academic formation by individuals. He describes the WB as the “guide” for neoliberal reforms in forming professors and, specially, in the effect coming from its documents on the delineations of the juridical and normative ordination of the Brazilian tertiary education.

The author studies/explains the role of the WB in the globalization of Brazilian tertiary education, with her locus of research set as the undergraduate licentiate courses in the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), emphasizing that the Bank’s receipt doesn’t reflect the real needs of the Brazilian educational context. She also denounces the WB for not caring about encouraging a “critical formation” of individuals because, according to her, it is only worried about its financial gains⁴.

The board 1 presents an organization of the works discussed above. The same goes for the presentation of other texts that, while initially fitting the criteria of inclusion, didn’t contribute with a deeper understanding about the WB’s role in Latin American tertiary education.

State of the Art of Brazilian research about WB’s actions over tertiary education: the case of PhD. theses

Concerning Ph.D. theses, the first one was published in 2005, originated from Universidade de Campinas (Unicamp). In it, De Blasi (2005) aimed to discuss the role of the processes of evaluation of tertiary education in Latin America, centered on the reforms of the 80s and 90s, mostly influenced by the WB and UNESCO. The research deepens the debate with cases of what she calls “change of identity of the IES” in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, all, according to her, delineated through the lens of a neoliberal economy project.

The author claims that the reforms on the tertiary education systems of Latin America - especially in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Chile - were stablished to adapt IES identity to neoliberal policies. She defends that the main responsible for such changes were the WB, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

De Blasi (2005) presents the WB as one of the political agents heading the neoliberal ideals over educational projects, and then concludes that the change of IES identity revolved around a new model of conception and problematization of knowledge evaluation. It would ideally be set on a competitive, quantitative, controlling, divisionist trend, directly linked with the financing of research and with the operation of tertiary education, as the WB would stablish. The State would become a “Evaluating State”, because, in a neoliberal logic, it should keep itself distant from the role of financing, raising its power over the tertiary education system (De Blasi, 2005).

The second thesis, written by ^{Berchansky (2008}), pointed that the WB, as a conductor to the “New Imperialism” through its educational guidance, has receded the aspect of social rights in tertiary education. It was stablished in reforms during the 90s in Brazil and Argentina, as they privileged the market reason (Berchansky, 2008).

What he calls “New Imperialism” reforms to the new ways that the USA can exercise power and domination over other countries after the II World War. In his thesis, he claims that the New Imperialism is masked as globalization, branching through communicational, military and economic components. In relation to tertiary education, it results, among other ways, into a commodification.

The WB interferes directly in Latin American tertiary education, through the “homogenic packages” (^{Berchansky, 2008}). The author defends that the WB’s policies are imposing and do not consider the specificities of socio-historical processes of the member-states. Therefore, he concludes that the WB is responsible in the defense and spread of the New Imperialism, with its practices of commodification of tertiary education. Also, the governments that claimed to be breaking this logic, in Brazil and Argentina, actually stayed inside it.

In ^{Lima’s (2014}) thesis, it is shown how much the processes of privatization of tertiary education, specifically of the formation in social service, in Brazil and Colombia, are affected by the movement of expansion and privatization of this level of education. In his consideration, there is a model of new developmentalism in course, pressuring for the harmonization between capitalist interests and the educational training.

In the author’s view, international institutions subdued the education of peripheric capitalist countries to their needs, to maintain historic inequalities. In this aspect, Latin American countries are submitted to international organizations, due to their insertion process into the capitalist structure and its deepening, after the existence of neoliberal demands after the end of the 20th century.

Although the results presented by ^{Lima (2014}) do not consider the WB as the only responsible for certain neoliberal measures in the rebuilding of the formation in social service, it can be claimed that the author ends her thesis by affirming that both Brazil and Colombia follow strictly the WB’s prescriptions for tertiary education - as the creation of short technical postsecondary courses and courses based in education at distance. She concludes that, for the greater that the commodification and prevarication of the formation in social service as defended by the WB can be, it is due to the organization of the resistance of the laborers of the area to fight against the capitalist trend.

The board 2 presents an organization of the theses analyzed through this research, along with information concerning them. As board 1, it also presents a text that, although initially fitting in the criteria of inclusion, doesn’t bring in it the goal of discussing deeply the role of the WB in Latin American tertiary education.

Through analyzing both boards, it is possible to see the graduate programme into which each researcher pertained during their research. It can be noted that the research over the WB actuation in Latin America, both of master’s and PhD level, are not only done in the field of education, but also in programmes of integration among themes like Latin America, Public Policies, and Public Sociology. Also on this topic, authors as ^{Bello, Jacomini and Minhoto (2014}) proved that there are, indeed, works that come from outside of the field of Education, also dealing with public policies. For these researchers, it shows the transversality inherent to this topic.

Concerning methodology, the one most followed by the authors in their work was the historical-dialectical materialism. It can be explained because most of them come from the understanding that the WB is a tool of capitalism, used for the propagation of the international capital interests - especially north American. Therefore, in short, the prevailing point is that the WB imposes measures on the reformulation of educational policies in Latin-American estates.

None of the works mentioned above deepens on the inner workings of the WB (as origin description, the configuration of the five bureaus that constitutes it today, its line of work over the years, among others). Because of it, the idea of the imposition of the WB over Latin-American states, by the Washington Consensus, has prevailed. It is worth mentioning that a better understanding of details on the WB’s workings could change such view, beyond the reading and interpretation of documents on the field of tertiary education signed and published by the institution over the decades of 1980 and 1990 - as shown in the results from ^{Santos’ research (2014}; 2017; 2020).

It is possible to show and explain certain coherences among the results of the publications, as: the WB leads and helps to create an idea of neoliberalism; the WB is a relevant actor in the globalization processes; the WB develops a change in tertiary education headed to market views; and, the relation with the WB interferes not only in the financing of scientific research on tertiary education, but also in the specificities of the teaching job.

Final Thoughts

The present paper described the publications that have as their goal to discuss the WB’s actions over Lain Americas tertiary education. It has demonstrated that, both dissertations and theses point to a deepening of the interference played by this international organ in relation to the distinct conceptions of labor specialization in this level of education. Although, it comes into attention the lack of scientific production on the theme in graduate programmes, as their researchers prefer to deal with the matter as a side theme in relation to other subjects investigated by them.

As affirmed by Romanowsky and Ens (2006), data resulting from this kind of research relate to what the researchers are looking for on the matter. Consequently, this paper enabled a descriptive and critical balance on the bibliographical works concerning the WB and tertiary education over Latin America, consisting of theses and dissertations.

It shows the need of more theorical basis, with a deeper understanding of the working of the State. In other words, it means to question the processes of civilian action, the conception of citizenship, the patterns of power, the ways of domination, democracy biases, among other concepts that are being utilized daily in Latin American tertiary education.

It needs to be noted that, generally, the works found bring evidence on the WB’s actions being based on its said imposition over its member-states from the capitalist periphery - Latin American economies. This idea gained in strength mostly because of the raise of economic capital and the tightening of American influence over the WB’s decisions. In this manner, it can be concluded that, for next works, researchers should look for the WB’s actions through other lens, as suggested by ^{Santos (2017}; 2020).

More than being a “supreme master” of educational policies, the relation of the WB with Latin American states is becoming what ^{Santos’ (2017}; 2020) calls consented intervention. In other words, the processes of elaboration, implementation and analysis of the partnership are impacted by geopolitical power relations that, mostly, are based on varied capital forms in the political arena, instead of the WB imposition over its member states. It is exactly, according to the aforesaid author, in the analysis of such negotiations where we can find the answer for the conflict over the offer and demand for financing and the execution of each of the policies in partnership with the WB.

In conclusion, the study on the roles played by the WB deserves to be deepened and more explored, since it is a relevant player in the field of Tertiary education, especially in the financing of local, national and multilateral policies. What presents us as a constant challenge of research over the theme is the analysis of inner details on the content manifest in the political documents signed by the WB, dealing with the educational contexts in their most varied aspects. They could be revealing of implicit ideas on the kind of subject and society defended by the policies stablished by this international organ and its Latin American member-states.