Políticas públicas de expansão e de financiamento da educação superior: implicações sobre as instituições de ensino superior em Campina Grande-PB

Abstract

The general aim of this work was to analyse the public policies regarding the expansion and financing of higher education and their implications on the public and private higher education institutions in the municipality of Campina Grande - PB, between 2007 and 2014. In order to better underlie the study, it was taken a brief report on the higher education reform in Brazil as a starting point. It was pointed out that the most evident aspect of the reform is the mercantilization of the scientific knowledge and it was discussed the main guidelines of the international organizations that support higher education. After having done these first analyses, it was evaluated the policies of expansion and financing, and an attempt was made to apprehend the changes the State has been experiencing due to the proposals and projects which reduce its action in the field of education, being replaced by private organizations. After that, it was approached some aspects related to the expansion and financing of the higher education in Brazil over the last decades, highlighting the policies of education state funding programmes like Fies, ProUni and REUNI. Then, it was analysed the higher education policies, under both public and private perspectives and an attempt was made to understand the strategies of implementation and consolidation of such contemporary transformations of capitalism. After this contextualization, it was presented the synthesis of the results of the implications of public policies of expansion and financing on the higher education institutions in the municipality of Campina Grande-PB. It was decided to carry out a qualitative research and it was adopted the bibliographic and documental kind of research. In this perspective, an attempt was made to focus on the Brazilian education legislation; works of authors who have been contributing to the debate on public and private higher education policies; as well as statistics data concerning this educational level, searching to highlight the particularities. The data analysis showed that there has been a significant process of expansion and access to higher education. However, this expansion did not represent a vast democratization of the access to higher education, as it was observed a not very expressive number of graduating students.