Ampliação do acesso ao ensino superior no governo Lula : tenuidade entre a democratização e a privatização

Abstract

The main discussion of this dissertation focuses on the policy for expanding access to higher education developed in two presidential administrations of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The mission of democratizing higher education nationwide was taken by the current administration of the federal government even before Lula occupy the presidency, and it has put in a position beyond a campaign promise, but as a commitment to the Brazilian population. The federal government took upon itself the responsibility to address some points entered in the National Education Plan (NAP), in force since 2001 that were vetoed or poorly developed in the administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. In particular, by our desire to study, are: (1) reaches the percentage of thirty percent of the Brazilian population among eighteen and twenty-four years in higher education and (2) promote the expansion of public higher education until it reaches forty percent of total vacancies in the Brazilian higher education. Besides these goals, the Lula government linked its policy of democratization to a major axis of social justice. The justification for this was sustained on the fact that the Brazilian higher education is a reflection of the framework of social inequality in the country in which historically the lower classes are excluded or occupy an insignificant area in higher education. Facing this scenario, we start with the understanding that the access policy is part of a larger set of measures that, combined, form the higher education reform in Brazil, popularly known as university reform. Thus, our approach is not restricted to ad hoc measures, undertaken in the Lula government, that aims more directly interfere in the expansion of higher education nationwide. There were several actions that the federal government has developed to this effect, including most importantly the Open University of Brazil (UAB), University for All Program (ProUni), the Support Program for the Restructuring and Expansion of Federal Universities (REUNI), among many others. With this, we plotted as a central goal analyze this policy of democratizing access to higher education as a whole through the context of the current university reform. As a theoretical method, we opted for dialectical materialism, because there is no intention to review the documents themselves, but to understand them in the political-economic and socio-cultural reality of the Brazilian forward to the current phase of capitalist mode of production. As a source of data, together with documents relating to the university reform, we sought support in speeches of some individuals involved in social reform, in texts and documents produced and issued by the Government, and statistical sources from official agencies. Besides the introduction, the work was composed of three chapters. At first, we attempted to reasoning about the university policy developed before the Lula government, with highlights to the role of multilateral organizations and the conduct that the Cardoso government gave it. In the second, we attempted to contextualize the university reform. In the third, it has set up an analytical dialogue on the political processes inherent in the policy of expanding access promoted by President Lula. At last, it was found that the federal government failed in the face of commitments made to the policy of democratization of higher education, as well as deepen their degree of privatization, both for the benefits granted to private institutions of higher learning as the domestic privatization of public universities.