Equity, quality and relevance in higher education in Brazil

Brazilian higher education has doubled its size in the 1990s, going from 1.5 million to more than 3 million students in the period. This expansion was mostly due to the growth of private education, which, in 2002, accounted for about two thirds of the enrollment. Is expansion making higher education more accessible to persons coming from the poorer segments of society? Is the quality of higher education suffering by the speed of this expansion? Is Brazil educating enough qualified persons to attend to the country’s needs to participate in the new, knowledge-intensive and global economy? What public policies should be implemented, in order to foster the values of social equity and relevance? What are the policy implications of these developments? This article looks at the available evidence, and suggests some answers to these questions.