Brazilian Postsecondary Education in the 21st Century: A Conservative Modernization
Brazilian higher education has experienced a rapid expansion since the beginning of this century, from a total enrollment of 2.7 million students at the undergraduate level in 2000 to 8 million in 2015 (INEP 2000, 2015). Despite the efforts by the federal
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13. BRAZILIAN POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY: A CONSERVATIVE MODERNIZATION1
EXPANSION AND FAILED DIVERSIFICATION
Brazilian higher education has experienced a rapid expansion since the beginning of this century, from a total enrollment of 2.7 million students at the undergraduate level in 2000 to 8 million in 2015 (INEP 2000, 2015). Despite the efforts by the federal government and some state governments, this expansion didn’t introduce significant diversification on the Brazilian higher education landscape. Brazilian higher education is, traditionally, recognized in different institutional formats. However all institutions, both universities and non-universities, have the same right to award bachelors degrees and offering this training is the main focus of all institutions. While the regulatory framework recognized new degree formats following the 1990s, diversification was resisted both by the institutions, especially the public universities, and by the society as a whole. Families and enterprises continue to devalue diplomas in favor of the traditional bachelor degree. The following text will explore in depth the institutional dynamics that sustained this pattern of conservative expansion experienced by the Brazilian higher education during the last two decades. THE LEGACY OF THE PAST
The university model is a late addition to the Brazilian postsecondary education institutional fabric. From the beginning of the 19th century, when the first higher education institutions were established, until the beginning of 1930s and the first university law, the only kind of postsecondary education was the isolated professional school. These schools were mostly training institutions. At that time, the most powerful members of the academic profession were the professors holding chairs, to whom academic activities were only a prestigious complement to an active professional life. Full-time commitment to academic life and research were not considered important, since the main purpose of a postsecondary education was to train and certify young people
P. G. Altbach et al. (Eds.), Responding to Massification, 155–165. © 2017 Sense Publishers and Körber Foundation. All rights reserved.
E. BALBACHEVSKY & H. SAMPAIO
from rich and powerful families to enter a profession. The first universities created in 1930s usually merged established professional schools with newly created faculties of philosophy, science, and humanities. Until the beginning of the 1970s, Brazilian universities followed the traditional Latin American model (Bernasconi 2002); they were mostly teaching institutions with few academics on a permanent contract, but none with a full-time commitment to the university. While the faculties of philosophy, science and humanities encouraged some research and intellectual life, this happened on a small scale, with limited external support or recognition. In 1968 a major reform changed the public sector landscape, forcing the adoption of the departmental model, and the introduction of full-time contracts for ac
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