Avaliação da pós-graduação no Brasil e a produção intelectual: o “modelo Capes” de 1975 a 2002

Abstract

This dissertation presents a study on the evaluation of the Brazilian postgraduate courses performed by Capes, aiming at problematizing the conditions that have enabled the intellectual production to attain a central role in the evaluation model. The investigation has been grounded on official documents issued by Capes from 1975 to 2002. The year 1975 has been regarded as the beginning of the evaluation of postgraduate courses by Capes, and year 2002 as the end of the management that implemented the new evaluation model. As theoretical-methodological lenses, the study has adopted the notions of governmentality and genealogy, as well as other central concepts such as performativity, norm, neoliberalism and government by the numbers. From both these concepts and the documental analysis, the study has aimed to understand how the need to classify and rank, which has been inherited from Modernity, has been instensified and become central in Contemporaneity, thus being regarded as natural in the model used by Capes to evaluate postgraduate courses. The following research findings should be highlighted: although Capes was founded in 1951, the postgraduate courses were strengthened and developed in Brazil with both higher education laws passed in the late 1960s and the development ideas then in vogue; between 1974 and 1979, the postgraduate courses experienced a huge development, and in 1975 the first scholarship-oriented evaluation was performed, and the amount of intellectual production emerged as a criterion in that early period of evaluation; from 1979 to 1982, it was necessary to perform an “adjustment” in the postgraduate system, leading to the evaluation systematization, when the courses started being required to show their intellectual production, an econometric planning was performed, and a “quality” campaign took place; 1982-1989 management was pointed as the moment in which the design of measurements was required to support the evaluation process implemented in previous managements; from 1990 to 1994, when Capes informatization became stronger, the so-called saturation of the evaluation system occurred, as the evaluation was no longer able to “differentiate” “quality”, according to Capes; along the 1995-2002 management, the new evaluation system was implemented, and the intellectual production became central, particularly through Qualis journals; from this period on, meritocracy, performance, performativity and competitiveness have been intensified.