The Expansion of Higher Education in Brazil as a Cooption Mechanism

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed an enormous expansion of higher education in Brazil. However, this expansion has been greater in the private sector, particularly in the form of “unattached colleges of higher education”. Where universities possess the greatest academic freedom and the highest academic standards, unattached colleges are more subject to government control and have lower standards. Their growth can be seen as a reflection of middle-class pressure for access to higher education, especially in smaller towns in the interior of the more advanced States. Rather than democratizing the system by increasing access to the universities (where the student body has always been more politicized), this was a means of co-opting the middle class at a time when economic policy was unfavourable to some sectors of that class.