This study presents an analysis of the contribution of knowledge acquired in graduate schools for regional development. The investigation is grounded in two lines of reasoning: one based on mainstream studies that consider investment in basic science to be an essential element for the economic development of any region and the other which defends interdisciplinarity as a response to the fragmentation caused by a positivist epistemology of nature that has been increasingly occupying space in Brazilian universities with the expansion of graduate study. This fact contradicts the needs of the knowledge society, informational and globalized, which imposes modern science as a solution for this new organizational form. The research was based on the collection of secondary data which were analyzed using coefficients of correlation, specialization and restructuring. Results show that regional inequality limits processes of education and, consequently, of innovation, which are among the factors that prevent the equitable economic growth of regions.