This paper examines the teaching work in public universities, especially at the Federal University of Bahia in Portuguese, UFBA, between 2005 and 2008, from the phenomenon of the precarization of labor and the consequent alienation of the worker, based on the results of doctoral research in UFBA. It describes the fundamental dimensions of this process: the multiplicity of tasks, , internal and external fundraising for research, contradictions between training and the demands of the university system, work overload and its consequences, such as absence of leisure, loss of control over the academic project and illness. It concludes that the main contradiction experienced by the teachers is that the autonomy perceived by them is not the one exercised, since it is subjected to various internal and external controls of the meritocratic system, whose demands exceed the physical and psychic capacity of the teacher to respond appropriately . However, understanding the process of alienation is the basis for transformation and emancipation of those who have a fundamental role in developing the capacities of others.
alienation; precarization; teaching; university and higher education