A relação entre a eficiência da educação profissional federal e o desenvolvimento socioeconômico municipal brasileiro

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between the efficiency in managing public educational resources of the Federal Network of Professional, Scientific, and Technological Education (RFEPCT) and the socioeconomic development of Brazilian municipalities from 2017 to 2023. The institutional efficiency of the campuses was measured using Data Envelopment Analysis, with bias correction via bootstrap, utilizing current expenditures per student and per staff as inputs, and the number of graduating students as the output. The efficiency scores were incorporated into econometric models, with panel data—both static and dynamic—to assess their association with municipal socioeconomic development, measured by the FIRJAN Municipal Development Index. The results indicate that higher levels of educational efficiency are negatively and statistically significantly associated with municipal socioeconomic development, even after controlling for economic, fiscal, and temporal persistence factors. Additionally, estimating different efficiency frontiers reveals the existence of territorial heterogeneities in the effects of institutional efficiency. The findings suggest that improvements in the efficiency of professional education management are linked to the strengthening of local development policies.