Policies for higher education in the early years of the New Republic in Brazil

con-vergences and alignments

Abstract

In this text, resulting from bibliographical and documentary research, it´s promoted an analysis of public policies for higher education during the brazilian New Republic first governments, covering the Sarney to Fernando Henrique Cardoso administrations. The documentation considered to portray the contours of higher education policies in that period includes reports and legal texts produced in the context of the country's redemocratization and political opening. As a result, the convergence between the initial governments of the New Republic, regarding to the policies for higher education, consisted of measures to increase the access for students through incentives for the privatization of the area, resulting in courses that had mostly a baccalaureate bias. In the federal universities, the emphasis was on mechanisms for optimizing installed capacity, without expanding costs. These guidelines coincided with the World Bank's recommendations for this level of education in developing countries, in an example of hybrid governance characteristic of an accelerated economic globalization juncture.