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To profit or not to profit: the private higher education sector in Brazil

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Abstract

Brazil has by far the largest higher education system in Latin America, with a sizable share of students enrolled in private-sector institutions. Its recently established and fast-growing for-profit sector is one of the largest worldwide. The for-profit sector already surpasses the public sector in student enrollment, and its role is growing. Public policy has supported for-profit growth, ostensibly for tax revenue reasons, but the federal government has recently launched social initiatives that include tax exemption policies for the for-profit sector in exchange for need-based scholarships. Through exploratory data analysis, this study explores the role, function, and form of the for-profit sector compared with its nonprofit and public counterparts. The findings reveal that the for-profit sector shares some important characteristics with the nonprofit sector but contrasts sharply with the public sector. The study concludes that countries such as Brazil are moving toward public funding for private higher education to meet enrollment targets. These findings may be able to address issues in other countries by considering similar public policies toward private higher education.

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Notes

  1. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) enrollment data for Brazil vary slightly from national sources (INEP). UIS data are only used in this section for purposes of comparison; otherwise, this article utilizes national data.

  2. GER refers to the total enrollment in higher education (regardless of age) expressed as a percentage of the total population of the five-year age group following secondary school.

  3. The behavior of legal nonprofit institutions before the legislation allowing for-profits was often related to stretching the intent of the law. Depending on national public policy, many countries worldwide allow gains for owners and investors even in legal nonprofit institutions (Kinser and Levy 2006).

  4. This article centers its analysis on the size and scope of the for-profit sector in Brazilian higher education. The comparison of private nonprofit and public sectors sheds light on the characteristics and roles of the for-profit sector. This publication restricts its approach to the for-profit sector as legally defined in Brazil. It does not include discussions on the production of profit in nonprofit or public higher education institutions. The latter is a relevant development that certain studies address as other types of privatization or marketization of the public sector.

  5. McCowan (2007) offers a discussion on the issue of equity in Brazilian higher education and how it relates to public versus private-sector dominance.

  6. A couple of recent commentary pieces have found little difference between the performance of students in federal institutions compared to their private counterparts (Castro et al., 2012; Mereb and Oliveira, 2017). If this evidence holds up, it would debunk a widespread opinion that the private sector and for-profits tend to provide lower quality education than the public sector (federal universities participating in performance tests).

  7. Selective access is more predominant in fields such as medicine than education or social work. Additionally, affirmative action policies have reduced, although in a limited way, the selectivity levels of federal universities (Castro 2015; Schwartzman 2014).

  8. Although it is not the focus of this article, the federal government in Brazil has also financed public sector expansion through different programs; the largest one is the Restructuring and Expansion of Federal Universities (REUNI) program (Castro 2015). Recently, the federal government has expanded public federal universities through affirmative action policies aimed at helping racial minorities. As of 2012, 10% of the newly admitted students in federal universities had been admitted through affirmative action programs (Schwartzman 2014).

  9. Based on official exchange rates at the time of this writing, this figure represents about US$593 million.

  10. This article highlights policy developments affecting private higher education. During Lula da Silva’s presidency, policies were also enacted to increase enrollment in the public sector as well.

  11. The difference between university and non-university institutions is evidenced by the level of autonomy and by the offering of graduate programs. University-level institutions benefit from having higher degrees of autonomy than do non-university institutions. University institutions must also provide graduate training. Unlike many other countries, in Brazil, degrees granted by non-university and university institutions are the same. For instance, both university and non-university institutions grant engineering degrees (Nunes 2012; Schwartzman 2014).

  12. Medicine, for instance, is offered as a bachelor’s degree that requires 6 years to complete.

  13. Unfortunately, there are no data available on the employability of graduates with this type of education. Many discussions in the USA, for instance, focus on how expensive some vocational programs are and how little they help graduates find jobs that allow them to repay student loans.

  14. The number of professorship positions is not necessarily equal to the number of professors. The number of positions is frequently higher than the number of professors since one professor may hold two or more part-time positions.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks Daniel C. Levy, Simon Schwartzman, and Gilbert Valverde for their feedback on early versions of this paper. Also, the author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments that greatly contributed to improving the final version of the paper. All views expressed in this article are those of the author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Humanidades (IDH)-Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Córdoba, Argentina

    Dante J. Salto

  2. Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Cordoba, Argentina

    Dante J. Salto

  3. Research on Private Higher Education, State University of New York SUNY, Albany, NW, USA

    Dante J. Salto

  4. Pab. Agustin Tosco, floor 1, office C, Ciudad Universitaria 5000, Cordoba, Argentina

    Dante J. Salto

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Correspondence to Dante J. Salto.

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Salto, D.J. To profit or not to profit: the private higher education sector in Brazil. High Educ 75, 809–825 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0171-8

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