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Higher Education Expansion and Diversification: Privatization, Distance Learning, and Market Concentration in Brazil, 2002–2016

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Abstract

We look at the expansion of a higher education system through the lens of concentration in the distribution of enrollments among institutions. Using data from the Brazilian Higher Education Censuses from 2002 to 2016, we found that the diversification of segments that compose the system was associated with an increase in concentration and market oligopolization. The higher education expansion in Brazil has a history of high growth and high concentration among large institutions. Enrollment more than doubled in 14 years, but growth among the top 1% of institutions was higher than the total growth among the bottom 90% of institutions. Much of the market concentration was due to a combination of subsidized privatization and deregulated virtualization. Private distance education was the main driver of concentration. By the end of the 2002-2016 period, the private sector contributed to 77% of all concentration, with private distance education alone contributing to 40%.

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Fig. 1

Source: Higher Education Census 2002-2016, INEP, microdata

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Notes

  1. The list is comprised by the following institutions (number and proportion of total enrollments presented in parenthesis): Universidade Pitágoras Unopar (370751; 5%), Universidade Paulista (350616, 4%), Universidade Estácio de Sá (209720, 3%), Universidade Anhanguera – Uniderp (161944, 2%), Universidade Nove de Julho (137698, 2%), Centro Universitário Internacional (133876, 2%), Centro Universitário Leonardo Da Vinci (101247, 1%), Universidade Anhembi Morumbi (59281, 1%), Centro Universitário de Maringá – UNICESUMAR (57712, 1%).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Adriano Senkevics, Antonio Augusto Pereira Prates, Elisa P. Reis, Fábio Waltenberg, Maria Lígia Barbosa, Marta Arretche, Paulo Corbucci, Paulo Meyer Nascimento, Raquel Guilherme de Lima, and Simon Schwartzman for their comments to previous versions of this work. We also thank Paulo Scarpa for his help translating our manuscript from Portuguese to English. Members of the Interdisciplinary Research Network for the study of Inequality gave different contributions to the empirical part of this paper over the years, we are grateful for their assistance.

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  1. Department of Sociology, UFRJ – Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Flavio Carvalhaes

  2. Ipea - Institute for Applied Economic Research, Brasília, DF, Brazil

    Marcelo Medeiros

  3. Department of Sociology, Colégio Pedro II, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Clarissa Tagliari Santos

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  1. Flavio Carvalhaes
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Carvalhaes, F., Medeiros, M. & Tagliari Santos, C. Higher Education Expansion and Diversification: Privatization, Distance Learning, and Market Concentration in Brazil, 2002–2016. High Educ Policy 36, 578–598 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-022-00275-z

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