STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES, PROFESSIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION, FUNDING AND POLITICAL CONSERVATISM Talita Prada
Introduction
I
t is urgent to reflect on student support to promote academic permanence and development as these are inseparably entwined from basic right through to higher education. We start from the approach that student support is a right that should be universalised and articulated with other social structures and policies that are complementary to ensure permanence at school and academic development. This requires public funding to meet student needs, respecting their differences, necessities and singularities. Our analysis traverses the Brazilian fiscal austerity, as it is impossible to envisage equal conditions of permanence and access disconnected from the economic crisis that affects social policies and increases inequalities in the national panorama. This taxation policy generates inequalities and is used to attenuate market inequalities, with Constitutional Amendment 95 being a means of perpetuation that relegates social policies to the level of privatisation and philanthropy (FAGNANI, 2018). Austerity is an ideological form of intervening in reality and justifying the cuts to social expenditure in essential public services for the working class. It exempts the State from implementing social policies free of charge and opens the door to strengthening market forces in the most diverse areas such as health and education. Yet, as a counterpoint, it does not attack the true causes of the economic crisis (BLYTH, 2017).
