Acesso à Educação Superior: O ProUni em foco

The chapter discusses higher education (HE) in Brazil in the last 15 years, a period during which Brazil underwent a process of continuous economic growth and marked social inclusion, with significant impact on HE. Two factors explain the exponential expansion in enrollments in the last two decades; the raising aspirations for the benefits of HE by the students and their families, and changes in the labor market. The chapter starts with a description of the HE system. In the second part, we discuss the profile of the demand for HE in Brazil. In the third part we present how the system as a whole has responded to the challenge of expansion and inclusion. In the fourth and final part, we analyze the characteristics of Brazilian higher education institutions (HEIs) in the offer of courses and the market demand for qualified people. Among other aspects, the chapter shows that it has been easier to respond to the demands for social mobility than to the requirements of a modern economy.

The globalization of the idea and evaluation processes of educational systems lead to the emergence of the debate about the relation between the homogeneity of the abstract universal models and the heterogeneity of the experiences with the evaluation in each national context. Therefore, such relationship is taken as the guiding principle of this article: the scenarios of the assessment of higher education in Brazil, Portugal and England are here scopes for a comparative analysis with the central purpose of characterizing and situating them in the broader or global context of state and supranational regulation. The National System of Evaluation of Higher Education (SINAES) in Brazil, the Portuguese Evaluation and Accreditation System (coordinated by the Agency for Evaluation and Accreditation of Higher Education, A3ES, a private law foundation), as well as the recent Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) from the United Kingdom serve as corpus for this study. The main conclusions of the study revolve around the narrowing of the relations between education and economics in higher education, expressed in the conceptions, regulations, criteria and the political and social uses of the evaluation systems of this level of education in the countries analyzed.

Higher education, unbundling, and the end of the university as we know it

The evolution of higher education in Brazil is described and proposals for its reform analysed. Enrollment growth in the 1970s favoured private institutions and most of the expansion was absorbed by private non-university establishments. The article next examines the financing of higher education in Brazil before turning to efficiency and equity issues. To improve the latter more students from low-income families must complete secondary education and have access to good-quality subsidized higher education. A system of loans and of scholarships for the needy is suggested for a system in which the inequity problems at higher education are a consequence of inefficiencies at the basic education level.

The Brazilian government has been making efforts to increase access to higher education, causing the growth of these institutions, especially those belonging to the third sector. Due to its relevance to the country, it must be noted that these organizations have their own attributes, including those related to their level of disclosure. Based on certain propositions of Disclosure Theory, the aim of this paper is to investigate the association between the disclosure level of Philanthropic Institutions of Higher Education in Brazil - PIHEB and some of their corporate characteristics (size, location, leverage, gratuity, tax benefits, and subvention income). The descriptive and quantitative study was developed by analyzing a sample of 146 entities registered with the National Council of Social Assistance - NCSA. For hypothesis testing was developed a multiple linear regression model, based on the study of Gordon et al (2002). As the dependent variable was developed and used the Disclosure Index of Philanthropic Institutions of Higher Education in Brazil - DIPIHEB, measured by the qualitative characteristics of disclosure: (i) overview, (ii) performance of services, (iii) financial performance and (iv) the physical and financial (COY, DIXON and TOWER, 1993). The test results demonstrated a significant association only between the levels of disclosure and corporate characteristics gratuity and subvention income, showing no association between these levels and other variables. Additionally, it was possible to observe that most surveyed PIHEB presented only mandatory disclosure, showing little concern these institutions with voluntary disclosure.

This study analyzed the increase in the number of undergraduate nursing courses during the last two decades due to the expansion of higher education in Brazil. A records-based research concerning the legal frameworks that have driven this movement and a quantitative research that described the increase in the number of professional nursing courses. Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis (qualitative) and descriptive statistics (quantitative). the political-ideological argument present in the regulatory documents, which points out higher education as a possibility to change the current social scenario, has not been reflected in the professional nursing field. The expansion of nursing courses has been unfolding in a disorderly manner and is concentrated in the private sector, with geographical inequality in the distribution of these courses. There does not seem to be a concern with the local needs and with a connection among education, research and extension, which compromises the quality of the education provided to future nurses.

Trajectories in higher education and the University for All Program (ProUni) are the central theme of this paper. The research question was: To what extent were some factors experienced during university difficulties in the academic trajectory of ProUni and non-ProUni graduates? The approach was quantitative with an explanatory goal. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used in the data analysis. The research subjects were 197 higher education graduates from a Southern Brazil nonprofit institution who entered in 2005. 57 were ProUni scholarship holders and 140 were non-ProUni. Results indicate that the highest percentage of graduates who worked during college were not scholarship holders. A T-test was performed after creating the scales for external (p = 0.19) and internal (p = 0.66) factors, indicating that in both factors there was no statistically significant difference between being a ProUni scholarship holder or not and the difficulties presented during their academic trajectory. Results indicate the need for studies involving the set of higher education graduates in order to better understand the difficulties faced by both groups of students in their academic trajectories.

In spite of overall improvements in basic and high school education levels in the last decades, and of an increase in the supply of higher education, only 12% of Brazilian youths in the expected age are attending higher education in Brazil, against 21%in Argentina, 65%in the USA and 70% in Sweden. In this study, based on the most recent Pnad data (2013) and on data from ten years earlier (2003, just before the implementation of affirmative action policies), we obtained profiles of vulnerable and nonvulnerable groups in terms of access to higher education in Brazil. Then through the index of human opportunities (Barros et al., 2009), and making use of binary dependent variable regressions, we were able to measure inequality of opportunity in terms of access to higher education for both years. Results indicate that a reallocation of opportunities from nonvulnerable to vulnerable groups has taken place, and that access to higher education has also risen slightly in the course of one decade. However, the index of human opportunity as applied to higher education in Brazil (HOI = 0.281 in 2013) is very far from the ideal situation (HOI=1), which occurs when access is universal and there is no inequality of opportunity in the access. Finally, we have applied a Shapley decomposition to the calculated indices, and the main results are the substantial contribution of household-head's education level and the household's income to inequality of opportunity, and also a moderate impact of race.

This chapter analyzes how diversity has become a central issue of reflection about the expansion and democratization of higher education in Brazil. It begins by establishing a historical context connected to the actions of the social movements (feminists and blacks) in which the issue of diversity emerged as a problem in this country. The chapter presents the most relevant characteristics of higher education in Brazil, and shows how diversity begins to be treated as a matter of public policy by the federal government. It analyzes how the higher education institutions (HEIs) organized themselves to receive diversity, favoring social inclusion and equity and the action of social groups or social movements, in particular at public university, working on diversity. In order to understand how universities have been reacting and organizing themselves to receive diversity in Brazil, some aspects are further analyzed: the administrative structures for student assistance; faculty hiring; diversity at curriculum and the research field.

The article aimed to analyze the purposes of educational policies that reformed the last stage of basic education (high school) and higher education in Brazil, between 1997 and 2017, considering the mode of state regulation established in its relationship with access to education Brazilian public superior. Starting from a Marxian theoretical perspective, we undertook descriptive and explanatory research taking as sources the legal provisions enacted in the period that reformed secondary education and higher education in the period established in the study. The analysis of the proclaimed and real purposes of the devices showed that although there are specific regulations for higher education, access to this level is also impacted by policies relating to basic education, especially secondary education, which is why we infer that the regulation of basic and higher education produced in the period calibrates processes of state regulation of access to higher education. To the extent that they are reforming policies that directly (higher education) and indirectly (secondary education), due to their purposes analyzed here, have an impact on expanding or slowing access to higher education, highlighting societal and educational projects in dispute that, for a certain period, they maintain hegemony by implementing their policies. expanding or slowing down access to higher education, highlighting societal and educational projects in dispute that, for a certain period, hold hegemony by implementing their policies.

This study aims to analyze and compare the relationship between offer configuration and assessment models for higher education in Brazil, the United States, and the Netherlands. The analysis is derived from original empirical research. The research was documentary in form and analyzed higher education census material from three countries, considering the rules that institute and implement higher educational national assessment systems. Conclusions show that the role of the state, regarding higher education, is similar in Brazil and the United States, where the predominance of offerings are private. In these countries, assessment focuses on regulation of the system—the results of which are used to drive accountability. In the Netherlands, the state is principally responsibility for higher education offerings—accreditation procedures aim to improve and maintain the quality of the higher education system.

In Brazil, perceives that the post-graduation lato sensu and strictu sensu have formed professionals to carry out the teaching in higher education. The Master course in Biochemistry, Federal University of Pampa search through the curricular component Theory and Practice in Higher Education, provide spaces for reflection and proposition about teaching practice to prepare their learners for teaching in higher education, discussing topics about the history of higher education in Brazil and preparation to teaching in post-graduate courses. In this work, we seek to report the importance of these discussions in graduate programs and as professionals in various areas of knowledge can discuss and identify the current situation of higher education in Brazil in search of improving their practice through the participants perceptions of curricular component. In this sense, the discussions highlight the importance of this formative space for understanding about teaching in higher education, demystifying the professional's performance and its relationship with the teaching, research and extension. In conclusion, we highlight the relevance this model of pedagogical training the within the framework the post-graduation, stressing that these are spaces that contribute to the teacher training developing critical and reflective perceptions, making learning meaningful and potentiating the teaching practice.

Most scholars of higher education agree that Brazil has the most ambitious affirmative action policies of any country in the world. News is spreading that Brazil’s federal quota policies for affirmative action in undergraduate education, which reserve half of all seats in all courses of study at federal universities for students from Brazil’s infamously poor, and poor-serving, public high schools, are not only hugely ambitious but, as research is beginning to show, hugely effective. However, the country is not moving in a monolithic way toward greater equity in access to higher education. When one looks beyond the federal university policies, the picture becomes much more complicated. First, only 26 percent of all students in higher education in Brazil studied at public universities in 2013, while 74 percent studied in private universities, both nonprofit and for-profit. Of those in public universities, 59 percent are at federal universities, 31 percent at state universities, and 10 percent at municipal universities. Placed in the overall context of Brazilian higher education, this means that only 15.5 percent of all students study at federal universities, which is the only sector with a comprehensive affirmative action law. Therefore, the world’s most ambitious affirmative action policy applies to only a small percentage of all undergraduate students in higher education in Brazil (INEP/MEC 2013).

Este estudo tem por objetivo primeiro analisar como os Institutos Federais se integraram na oferta da Educação Superior no Brasil. Articuladamente, averiguar-se-á como ocorreu o processo de interiorização das vagas. Ao criar os Institutos Federais no ano de 2008, o governo federal os definiu como instituições de educação superior, básica e profissional, promovendo a ampliação do número de vagas no país. Foi empregada uma pesquisa quanti-qualitativa. A coleta de dados foi realizada a partir das informações do Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira – INEP, por meio do sistema do Censo da Educação Superior, entre os anos de 2008 a 2017. Os resultados preliminares demonstram como ocorreu a ampliação e interiorização das vagas, com uma contribuição decisiva dos Institutos Federais no acesso à educação superior em regiões que até então não eram atendidas.

Over the past few years, the debate on the future of higher education in Brazil has been by and large split into two camps. One side stresses the urgent need to broaden the system, to allow a growing number of Brazilians to gain qualifications and enter an increasingly competitive and international labour market as skilled workers. This is the view behind the significant expansion of private higher education in Brazil over the past decade. The other side does not disregard the problems of public higher education, or the demands of thousands of young people deprived of a university education, but holds that the expansion of higher education should be based on the conclusions of the 1998 World Conference on Higher Education in Paris. Rather than setting public against private education, this approach envisages the growth of the system as a whole, on the premise that education is a strategic asset for national development, a universal right and one of the duties of any State.