Brazil: Expanding Access Through Private Institutions

Abstract

Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America and the ninth worldwide, also exhibits a prominent higher education system. Enrollment figures place the South American country within the top largest higher education systems worldwide, just after China, India, and the United States. Even though its higher education system is relatively new (the first university was established in the 1930s), Brazil is catching up with its regional neighbors regarding enrollment rates. Its gross enrollment rates had swiftly boosted from 16 percent in 1999 to 49 percent in 2014. The bulk of that demand has been funneled through private expansion. While in many countries worldwide, the private sector has expanded despite an aggressive public policy against it, governmental policy in Brazil has incentivized enrollment of needy students in private institutions through a variety of policy tools. Those schemes include scholarships and loans for students and tax-exemption benefits to nonprofit and for-profit providers that enroll students in need. The tuition-free public sector largely remains dedicated to an elite, raising issues of inequality. Striking as it may seem for a developing economy and a new democracy, public policy toward private higher education has been consistent across the political spectrum. Both major parties have supported and promoted the expansion of the higher education system through the private sector, including the usually controversial for-profit sector.