The aim of this article is to analyse how education, since the 1 960s, has been viewed as an investiment, a factor of production, an increase in capital, which is, nevertheless, human capital. Public education (viewed as a human right) is characterized by attitudes and points of view that come, in fact, from the ones concerned with capital. This transition, which took place in the monopolist capitalism of developed countries, has influenced not only the technicism of Brasilian educational reform concemig the relationship between education and productivity, but it has also acquired new facets ín the 90's reform, due to the idea of total qualíty measured by efficiency/productivity. Therefore, the theory of human capital related to public policies for federal universities is studied, from the perspective of neoliberal thinking, and having as an aim the definition and characterization of those new facets, and not only the repetition of criticism which has already been expressed.
education; human capital theory; neoliberalism