Abstract

NEVES, Clarissa Eckert Baeta; RAIZER, Leandro  and  FACHINETTO, Rochele Fellini. Access, expansion and equity in Higher Education: new challenges for Brazilian education policy.Translated byRobin Lane. Sociologias [online]. 2007, vol.3Selected edition, pp. 0-0. ISSN 1517-4522.

Higher education has come to be included in the list of items considered to be of priority and of strategic importance for the future of a nation: a generally accepted conviction that development requires an ever increasing level of education in the population. In Brazil, however, only 10.6% of those aged between 18 and 24 manage to enter higher education. How to increase access and obtain greater equity whilst providing quality education is a central issue in education policy. In the last decade solutions have been proposed to provide greater access and equity based on the diversification of the system with the creation of new types of HEIs, new types and modalities of courses, as well as those proposals including affirmative action (PROUNI and the policy of quotas). The analysis of statistical data, interviews, documents, and legislation reveals the current situation: the amplification of access as well as the implementation of social inclusion policies, has, particularly in the private higher education sector, resulted in the production of a socially perverse democratization effect.

Keywords : Higher Education; diversification; equity; education policy.

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