Efeitos do modelo de distribuição orçamentária no desempenho das universidades federais brasileiras

Abstract

Given the strong expansion process experienced by Brazilian federal universities from 2008, through the Program to Support Restructuring and Expansion Plans of Federal Universities (REUNI), which provided opportunities for the expansion of access and permanence in higher education, at the time in that this same context of expansion has created new opportunities – new jobs, new courses, better qualification of intellectual capital, new research in new areas – but also new challenges – increase in the number of universities, internalization of teaching, increase in the number of students and servers, infrastructure growth and with it its inherent needs for operation, maintenance and development. Therefore, the relevance of the theme became evident from the moment when questions about how to assess the contribution of universities to the development of society in the economic, social, cultural and innovative dimensions have been presented as an object of interest, discussion and research. Thus, from the perspective of the relationships established between the distribution and allocation of budgetary resources, established by the MEC's budget matrix, examining the management model, with regard to structures and decisions, based on the perspective of the Agency Theory, which has as basic assumptions the conflict of interests between the agent and the principal, informational asymmetry and the control and monitoring management process based on governance, represented by university councils, and instruments for evaluating the performance of federal universities. In this environment, in which decision-making strategies on the allocation of financial resources can be revealed under the most diverse managerial orientations, the following research question is proposed: what are the effects (results) of the budget allocation and distribution model on the performance of Brazilian federal universities? Thus, the effects of the budget allocation and distribution model on the performance of federal universities were investigated, based on the behaviour of budget application, performance indicators, and their existing relationships and the effects of budget allocation on performance. For this, a quantitative approach was used, in a longitudinal perspective, analyzing data from 2008 to 2018, from fifty of four federal universities, which corresponds to 78.26% of the total universities currently, where 13 budget variables were analyzed, 10 performance variables and 4 more categorical variables, totalling 27 variables and 594 observations. In order to answer the research question, the Shapiro-Wilk Normality tests were applied, followed by the variance homogeneity test, Levene's test, Spearman's correlation analysis, factor analysis, and finally, the technique of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the effects. Subsequently, the results showed that there is no proportionality between budget allocation and performance, there is no relationship between most budget variables and most performance variables, and that the effects of allocation were not efficient. Therefore, the main conclusion is that budget allocation, given the current distribution model, does not generate proportional and satisfactory results, while it is also not perceived that the current performance indicators reflect the reality of different universities, given the complexity and particularity of each one. And that these results may be affected by the autonomy in applying the discretionary budget that each university brings.