Higher Education in Brazil: Privatization and Transformation

This paper aims to map the scenario of private higher education in Brazil in recent years (2013–17) from the Census of Higher Education (2018). Exploratory in nature, it is based on a qualitative and inductive research strategy, with the objective of analyzing 3 dimensions: growth of private higher education institutions (IES), 10 major educational groups that dominate the scenario in Higher Education in Brazil and evolution of distance education in public and private HEIs. The results indicate that the Brazilian private educational segment occupies 87.91% of the market share, with the 10 largest educational groups dominating 31.6% of the market. In contrast, the government system reduced its investment by 66.6% in the same period (2013–2017), which facilitated the private educational domain. Although there is an increase in distance courses (48.51%), the number of graduates is still relatively low (26.5%) in this category.