With this article we intend to contribute to the debate on the dilemma the state public universities would face nowadays, both in the central countries and in those countries of the periphery and semi-periphery, that is, before the economic-financial constraints and the new conception of the economy of state and rights or public services. The state public univerties see themselves identified with knowledge as public good or private/mercantile. We aim to show that the identity of the classical university is at stake. For this purpose, considering the very universal phenomenon like the extraordinary expansion of the private sector, specially the private/mercantile, the reduction of the state investments in the public universities, and the transit from the autonomic to the heteronomic university the theme of knowledge problematizes - due to the higher education - as a public or private good, the main theses involved in this question, and their consequences to the university identity. The empirical material of the study is constituted by some documents from the World Bank, WTO (World Trade Organization) and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), as well as data about financing and expansion of the higher education in Brazil, among others. By way of conclusion and in a succinct way, some new or renewed feature and marks of the Anglo-Saxon model, model that seem to be hegemonic in countries from North and South, are examined.
Knowledge as public good; State public university; Anglo-Saxon model; Public x private
