PUBLIC POLICIES FOR BRAZILIAN EDUCATION:Convergences in the Southern Cone and Latin America, Transformations and Quests at the turn of the century

Prof. Dr. Martha Abrahão Saad Lucchesi *Catholic University of Santos, Santos – SP, Brazil.

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University College Dublin, 7-10 September 2005

Introduction

Public policies for education have always been intrinsic to the model of nation pursued. In a quick flight through history, one finds indicative references such as the Greek polis, which provided its citizens with an Education that would enable them to maintain their status quo, as well as the policies of the French State, during Napoleon times, which intended to speed up a change toward factory production and technological modernity.

This study makes use of four kinds of documents: (1) Law texts to define the role of State, constitutional decisions within a representative state, to which people grant power and from which they expect public policies both coherent and consistent with higher Education, being aware of reflecting intentions and signaling tendencies; (2) newspaper and magazine news and articles which analyze the situation of higher Education in Brazil and documents form World Bank bringing prescriptions to privatize higher Education, which, in turn, contradict with the tendencies and challenges pointing at the consolidation of democratic learning and contributing to social inclusion, discussion and solution of great national issues; (3) official statistics whose data enable the qualitative and quantitative perception of gaps, flaws and imbalance between the higher Education scenario and data from the Ministries of Education in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile, as a comparative study in Latin America’s Southern Cone; (4) texts from the University Reform bringing proposals and intentions, both clear and hidden, which may either revert the process of rendering the university public or consolidate it. This analysis will take place in an interdisciplinary way since while respecting the statute of each science, it aims at generating a new thought, taking place at the threshold of Legal, Political and Educational Sciences.

Interdisciplinary studies take all specialists to recognize the limits of their knowledge to accept Contributions from other disciplines. Thus, a Science complements another one, and thedissociation, the separation of sciences is replaced by the convergence toward objectives in common.

(FAZENDA, 2003, p. 43)

* Ph.D and M.A in Education from the Catholic University of Sao Paulo and also a lawyer. Professor/ Researcher in the Masters in Education Program in the Catholic University of Santos/ State of Sao Paulo

The issue of public policies for Education configures itself as the very essence of what a people understands a State to be. This is the first epistemological issue of difficult definition (or better saying: ideological positioning) one aims at solving. Peroni (1998, p.1), in a study on the educational policy in the Brazilian State, in the 1990’s, affirms that:

The concept of State we apply (...) is the historical, concrete, class State, that is to say, the maximum State for capital since in the process of correlating powers under way, capital holds hegemony.PERONI, 1998, p. 1)

Although the notion of State had existed since Ancient times, it was bound to both autonomous cities and great Empires.

Historically, the concept of national State, as currently understood, arose in Modern Ages, from the Commercial Revolution, and only came true and configured itself as such in the 19th. Century, with the expansion in Europe and the Americas of the political ideas brought by the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, together with economic liberalism. Since then, the national State has detached from the figure of the king and started being regarded as an abstract concept applied to a set of concrete factors, as follows: the simultaneous existence of a people that holds and occupies a territory marked with sovereignty to govern itself.

The executive and legislative activities of the indi-vidual in a natural state would transfer to the society. This is, therefore, the base and the limit of governors’ political powers, that is, the process of creation of the social pact (public Ethos) and of the political power, regarded as transfer of the act of governing, by society’s grant, becomes the communal space constructed by this social pact. In this historical moment, the institutional and the historical traits of these times would have been produced by and for human beings. The whole historical origin of the Institution and Politics of any institution or social organization will be found in the State. Human existence in society preceded the historical production of modern State and its institutions for the construction, regulation and consolidation of the social pact. (LOCKE, 1991, p. 225)

In this sense, Aith (2002, p. 1) affirms that the existence of the modern State is bound to the existence of a people living in a given territory and holding sovereign political power over both the territory and people.

Brazil is a constitutional State, as it bases itself on a Constitution, seen as a national pact on the laws and rules regulating how citizens of this State will live together. The constitutional State is also a modern concept which, while restricting the power of the ruler, depersonalizes this power, by definition granted by the people through voting.

According to Aith (2002, p. 2), the constitutional State is based on a written law, resulting from consensus, which limits the power of rulers. Power is representative since it is held by the people and performed by the rulers elected by society. This separation between power and its performance characterizes the Rule of Law, in which the rights of citizens are guaranteed by “a legal division of power, founded in the respect to legality (formal and material), and according to which rulers should act.

One understands that the Rule of Law ensures that no individual, be it the president or an ordinary citizen, is above the law. Democratic governments exhort authority through the law and are in turn subjected to this very same law.

For Gonçalves (2002, p. 1) the definitions of public policies conceive the State as a central agent of its promotion. As they are used to centralizing the promotion of the State, they configure themselves as governments’ policies, in the sense that a change in government generally leads to changes in public policies. In reality, political campaigns tend to be grounded above all on the promise of adopting certain policies to the detriment of others, maintaining things the way they are, or rather, changing things both partially or totally. According to this premise, policies for Education or the higher Education subsystem shall be performed as State public policies. Therefore, they must not be either guided by timed policies or incorporated by the movement of political and economic privatization taking place since 1990; in fact, this movement reconfigures itself on the onset of the 21st century although apparently discussed in a democratic way with society, as compensatory neoliberal public policies.

Rodrigues (1999, p. 4) approaches the issue of “the relationships between the intergovernmental organizations’ policies and the States’ internal businesses, including public policies.” In other words, one may affirm that the autonomy of the State (preliminary condition for a State to be considered as such) undergoes practical limitations posed by the influence of international organizations. According to the author, these appear both due to “the progressive adherence to rules and policies negotiated and agreed upon within the Intergovernmental Organizations (IGO’s), and “the acceptance of interference modalities, in several degrees, exhorted by some IGO’s,” resulting from the new international scenarios, including the new issue of international relations.”1

Public Policies for Education: the Brazilian experience

In the 1970’s mainly after the Oil Crisis in 1973, one started to question the State model of Social Welfare, in which the worker’s income was complemented by social security, including health assistance, education and housing.

This model appeared after the capitalist State took over the role of controlling, or at least softening, the economic cycles in the aftermath of the 2nd World War. This model is also known as Fordism due to the fact it held industrial production and mass 1 For an overlook on the great current international issues, see RODRIGUEZ, Gilberto M.A. What are international relations? (1999)

production and consumption as its main core. From the late 1960’s on, mainly after 1973, Fordism underwent crisis, when the explosion of public debts, due to the oil crisis, made the limitations of the system growth clear.

New models for the administration of the capitalist enterprise started arising, known as flexible administrations (Harvey, 1989), characterized by changes in work administration within the capitalist enterprise. Meanwhile, the model of Social Welfare State started being questioned for its costs. Thus, ideas such as “minimum State” and “service privatization” have started to predominate, together with the growth of structural unemployment and the precariousness of work relations. Peroni (1998, p. 3) points out that the reduction of the presence of the State refers exclusively to the worker’s social welfare and legal protection. This political and economic thought has become known as “neoliberalism”.

In the meantime, one has verified the growth of financial profit over productive profit and the globalization of speculative investment facilitated by innovations in communications. In each country the intervention of the State will depend on the conditions of reproduction of these relations besides the conditions of productive accumulation. According to Peroni (1998),

The history of Brazil is marked by the power of patrimony, taken from the public to benefit the private sector, by patronage and reconciling pacts among dominant classes. It was thus in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, when the same practices continued taking place and privileging dominant classes.

In the 1990’s Brazil characterized itself by adhering to the idea of reducing the role of the State, which was not only the controller and economy stabilizer, by also its “fuel”, on account of the fact that it invested with the objective of accelerating the country’s economic and technological development.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who took office in a period of the State indebtedness, worsened by the capital’s high costs, proposed a reform in the Brazilian State, by means of public services’ privatization, especially in higher Education.

To do so, the Ministry of Administration and State Reform (MASR) was conceived and presented the guidelines for State Reform (1995), according to which such a reform “should be understood in the context of redefinition of the State’s role, which would no longer be directly responsible for the economic and social development, thus strengthening its function of promoting and regulating this development” (Peroni, 1998, p. 5)

On the issue of privatization, it is noteworthy mentioning that, according to Gentile (2004), it means in general terms:

“Delegating public responsibilities to private entities. Even if an immediate

consequence of privatization is the reduction of the government’s role related to educational-service rendering, with the related increase of private supply in this field, the dynamics of delegation of public responsibilities needs the State which immediately strengthens it. Thus, what is at stake is not the reduction of State action, but rather its reconfiguration.” (Gentile, 2004, p. 1)2

Also in the case of Brazilian educational policy, predominant in the 1990’s, the reduction of services rendered to the citizen by the State was intended. Another aspect of the same period was “to decentralize responsibilities”, i.e., several basic public services, such as health and education, were passed over to the municipalities. This transfer of responsibilities was not followed by resource decentralization. On the contrary, when substituting several “contributions” for taxes, the federal government freed itself from sharing resources belonging to the States and municipalities. The condition of indebtedness and insolvency of the States and municipalities worsened through the years, limited the intended autonomy that “decentralization” had proposed.

Hence, it may be said that privatization and responsibility transfer were conceived as guidelines in the Brazilian public policy agendas in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, including in relation to public policies for education.

In this case, there was strong interference from World Bank, which created a “recipe” for higher Education privatization and basic learning popularization in the region. This unique model, which based itself on the statistic mean of educational problems in underdeveloped countries, included, across the board, African, Latin-American and Asian countries, without taking their particulars into account.

The adherence to the model varied from country to country, thus leading to variations in results obtained, since it had as a premise very different national situations, including those related to educational rates.

World Bank’s Guidelines for Latin America

In 1994 the model recommended by World Bank pointed at the premise converging with the government’s policy:

To foster a higher institutional differentiation, including the establishment of private institutions.

2 Available on http://www.lpp-uerj.net/publicacoes.htm. Accessed on 07/18/04.

To provide incentives for public institutions to diversify financing sources, among which students’ participation in expenses and the close binding between fiscal financing and results.

To redefine governmental function in higher Education.

To adopt policies seriously aiming at granting priority to quality and equity objectives.

The Federal Government may follow the “recommendation” of World Bank to cut down on investments in higher Education, under the allegation of the existence of a public higher Education for an elite and the lack of State resources.

The elimination of subsidizing not related to instruction, adoption (or increase) of enrollment rights, achievement of donations and the performance of activities generating entrance fees are recommended by World Bank.

In these terms, students with a good financial situation would have to cover 25% to 30% of learning costs. The others would be granted student loans paid off after graduation. (World Bank, 1994). The interference of World Bank (linked with pressures from the International Monetary Fund –IMF) over public policies in underdeveloped countries is mentioned by Canadian economist Michel Chossudovsky, a critic of IMF’s and World Bank’s pressure (“Bretton Woods Institutions”) over indebted countries, obliging respective countries to follow guidelines from the Policy Framework Paper (Chossudovsky, 1995 apud Gonçalves, 2002, p. 13)

Apparently a document produced by autonomous governments, in reality this set of principles and goals seems to have been made under rigorous supervision of IMF and World Bank, following a pre-established pattern. (Ferrer, 1999 apud Gonçalves, 2002, p. 11)

There would be a task division, being World Bank responsible for effective reforms in health, education, the environment and even in industry, agriculture and transportation, since it is “present in many ministries.” (Chossudosvsky, 1995 apud Gonçalves, 2002, p. 11-12).

The application of World Bank policies for education has been implemented in different ways and intensities in Southern Cone countries (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile). Consequently, achieve results have varied.

It has been 10 years since Brazil started implementing diplomatic initiatives to approach member countries of South America’s Southern Cone, aiming at forming an economic bloc. There are several reasons for this, the main one being geographic proximity and exchange of people and goods.

It is worth mentioning that these management decisions have resulted in some treaties, the first one being Southern Cone, involving Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. Before this one there was the bilateral integration treaty between Brazil and Argentina, with many more ambitious objectives: to create an effective common market. This was the embryo of MERCOSUR, conceived according to the model of the Economic European Community, celebrated in 1991 between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Nowadays, MERCOSUR, is the most relevant and growing treaty in the region; the others are still effective and producing parallel results, such as the Southern Cone, which includes another three neighboring countries, but not members of MERCOSUR.

Education in the Southern Cone

Between 1960 and 1980 in Latin America, a great yet uneven expansion in higher Education took place. In 1986 Argentina, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Venezuela reached a rate of over 20% of students in higher Education.

In Brazil, according to the Ministry of Education (MEC), “in the last ten years, there has been a fast growth in the participation of the private sector in higher Education, currently responsible for 70% of enrollments.” (MEC, 2004)

Growth in private higher Education in Brazil, in the last ten years, has met the adopted public policies for privatizing public services. However, population’s income has not grown; on the contrary, it has shrunk, parallel to an increase in unemployment rates, resulting from privatization and flexible administration. Thus, 550,000 vacancies, corresponding to 37.5% of those supplied by private institutions, have been filled.

Only 9% of young Brazilians between 18 and 24 years of age have been able to go to college. In theory, therefore, there would be a great expansion potential in higher Education. However, the great majority of this percentage falls in the hands of low-income students, suggesting an imbalance between supply and financial conditions of those interested.

Still, there is a tendency toward growth due to the increase in enrollments in high school, from 1,274,933 in 1996 to 3,887,771 in 2003. (MEC, 2004)

Table I shows growth in student rates in higher Education in the last decades, not compatible with population needs or society demands.

Table I

Enrollments in Higher Education in Brazil

Year Public Private Totaln. % n. %

1992 629,662 41 906,126 59 1,535,7881998 804,729 38 1,321,229 62 2,125,9582002 1,051,655 30 2,428,258 70 3,479,9132003 1,137,119 29.2 2,750,652 70.8 3,887,771

Source: MEC, 2004.

It is interesting to observe graphs that compare the kinds of universities in some of the main South American countries (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay).

According to Trindade (2001), Brazil ranks 7th in the world in terms of enrollments in private universities while the USA ranks 20th.

Graph 1- Comparison of public and private universities in Southern Cone: 2004 (in numbers)

(*) In Chile all universities are public-law foundations (not state-owned). In this country free-of-charge public learning was extinguished enabling the private sector to expand.

Source: Lucchesi (data form the Ministry of Education in countries involved)

Source: MEC, 2004

The concept of public university differs in the countries above mentioned. Whereas in Brazil and Argentina they are state-owned, in Chile they are public-law foundations (not state-owned).

The University of Chile is a public-law legal entity, autonomous, with its own patrimony, and located in Santiago. The Dean is its legal representative. 3

Chile was the forerunner of neoliberal reforms supported by dictatorship. Free-of-charge public learning was extinguished enabling the expansion of the private system. State financing for public universities was cut down to 25% of the total, the rest being obtained through student tuition and research and service sales to private companies.

3 The University of Chile’s by-laws. Available on http://www.uchile.cl. Accessed on 08/02/2004.

Even after re-establishment of democracy, the Chilean government has maintained the old policy, controlling the private university system through assessment.

In 1980 there were only 8 universities in Chile: the University of Chile, the Catholic University of Chile, the University of Concepción, the Catholic University of Valparaiso, Federico Santa Maria Technical University, State Technical University (currently the University of Santiago of Chile), the Austral University of Chile and Northern University (currently Northern Catholic University).On that year, executive law # 3,542 allowed for the creation of private universities, regarded as non-profit private-law legal entities.

In Argentina, besides public and private universities, there are the so-called university centers, out of which 6 are state-owned and 12 are privately-owned. There is also a province university, equivalent to the Brazilian public state universities (the latter outnumber the former, being 3 located in the State of Sao Paulo alone). At last, without any equivalent in Brazil, there are a foreign university and an international university in Argentina.

According to Trindade (2001, p. 1), although the tendency to expansion in the private sector in Argentina has grown, the relevance and rhythm of expansion are comparatively smaller than in Brazil, from 15.2% of students enrolled in 1960 to 38.1% in 1995 and 70.8% in 2003.

During the military regime, the Brazilian public university grew, but not enough to meet the demand. Therefore, the following scenario was configured: quality public universities along with private institutions whose supply is restricted to popular courses and low operating costs, thus functioning as profitable enterprises, except for a few religiously-oriented universities, generally catholic and tailored to an elite, offering high-quality education. (Trindade, 2001, p.1)

As opposed to the cases above mentioned, the system in Paraguay is quite different. Most of its higher Education takes place in universities. The University Council recognizes the following: the National University of Asuncion, Our Lady of Asuncion Catholic University, the Columbia University of Paraguay, Northern University, the Autonomous University of Asuncion, the Autonomous University of Paraguay, Eastern Private University, Popular University and Eastern National University.

Among these universities, the National University of Asuncion (UNA) is worth mentioning: it consists of 12 colleges, 7 schools and 4 higher Education institutes; it holds branches in the interior of the country and offers courses in over 60 different careers, with over 20,000 students.

The second most important university is the Catholic one, with 7,000 students. Both this one and UNA are the only universities developing research as part of their functions.

The distribution by field of knowledge points at a strong preference for 2 careers: trading and education; nevertheless, it also provides reputable courses in health and pharmacy areas.

In relation to higher Education in Uruguay, it is noteworthy mentioning the significant number of enrollments, approximately 75,000 students, which means a student per 50

inhabitants in the country, or a level of social coverage higher than 30% of the relevant age bracket. The University of Eastern Republic of Uruguay is the most important one in the country: it consists of 13 colleges, 1 institute incorporated by a college and 2 university schools, configuring a supply of over 90 careers and a wide range of graduate courses.

The private sector is neglectful: only in 1984 was the first private university authorized, and up to the present moment the presence of this sector has developed gradually; today, it accounts for slightly over 10% of the total of enrollments.

As in Argentinean universities, Uruguayan students’ preferences tend to managerial fields, with clear concentration in Law and Accounting; the difference between Argentina and Brazil lies in the conglomerate of Engineering and Technology students, overtly less meaningful areas in Uruguay and Argentina.

Uruguay relies on central scientific policy tools: the National Council of Scientific and Technical Development, as well as the Basic Science Development Program, has been driving resources to the university system, whose major ratio reaches the Republic University and its investigation centers.

In short, MERCOSUR’s higher Education conglomerate presents clear heterogeneous traits in relation to its dimensions, quality and resources; nonetheless, for this very same reason, the integration treaty may generate synergies benefiting countries with a smaller degree of relative development.

On the other hand, differences in selection criteria pose a problem to be overcome through study mutual recognition, professional development and student mobility.

It should be mentioned that the most controversial issue in MERCOSUR’s agenda for higher Education lies in the mutual recognition of titles and degrees inside the community space; this is mainly due to the fact that subscribing countries have different educational systems, diverse criteria for admission and university formation and very heterogeneous figures in relation to university enrollment and number of scientific and technical professionals.

However, so as to reach this objective a task-force specialized in valuing and formation topics has been implemented; based on the configuration of groups of professionals stemming from professional and scientific associations, this workgroup has gathered to study the issue of mutual recognition aiming at the establishment of a professional community.

Until today, this task-force has not presented concluding data pointing at the accomplishment of this objective; nevertheless, there already are some initial agreements for curriculum unification, first step toward the registration and recognition of titles and degrees.

What may be verified, however, is that the privatizing policy defended by World Bank has been adopted by all aforementioned countries? This has taken place in a larger scale in Chile and Brazil than in other countries in the region.

New Proposals for Public Policies for Brazilian Higher Education

The present Brazilian government (Lula da Silva’s office”), which had always defended a public and free-of-charge higher Education, realized the need for proposing something new though without daring face World Bank’s and International Monetary Fund’s guidelines. Those are financial institutions on which Brazil still heavily depends in terms of loans, ideological approval and the avoidance of capital flight; for this reason, the government also maintains affirmative action policies, i.e., neoliberal compensation policies.

The present office follows the monetary policy practiced by the previous office and the Brazilian society has been currently discussing the university reform proposed by this office through Minister of Education Tarso Genro. Public federal university autonomy is one of the core aspects of the discussion. Another important aspect is related to how to curb the difficulty of access of underprivileged social brackets to higher Education. With the impoverishment of the population in the last years, the problem tends to worsen.

The privatizing policy of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s office (1994-2002) resulted in both an increase in vacancies supplied by private institutions and a restriction of financial resources for public universities. This policy followed World Bank’s guidelines (or rather, demands) which considered it necessary to direct public federal financial resources to basic learning although the Brazilian Constitution establishes the followings: the Federal government should account for higher Education, State governments should be responsible for high school learning, and municipalities should be in charge of basic learning.

In an attempt to provide emergency aid to private institutions and, in the meantime, to supply more vacancies to low-income students, the Federal government has created PROUNI (University for All Program), which consists of offering fiscal advantages to private higher Education institutions in exchange for a percentage of free-of-charge vacancies for low-income students coming from public schools, and in some cases, from particular ethnic groups. Elementary public school teachers without higher Education degrees are also included in the program.

This proposal, implemented through Decree # 5245 from October 15, 2004, which regularizes Provisional Measure # 213 from September 10, 2004, establishes the University for All Program – PROUNI and regulates social welfare beneficent entities working with higher Education, has been criticized. Entities linked with public education allege that the funds would present better results if applied toward the increase in public learning vacancies and, above all, in the latter’s recovery since it underwent serious losses during FHC’s offices. This proposal foresees the transfer of public resources to the private sector, without any guarantee of results to selected students, a selection process related to financial difficulties rather than academic merit.

In a society where capitalism prevails and workers receive a salary, making a minimum wage does not allow for humanity since it does neither replenish

people nor render access to social and cultural assets viable. (Severino, 2002, p. 64)

From this point of view, what are the real possibilities for low-income students, though included in PROUNI, to support themselves and gather knowledge necessary to effective citizenship?

For private higher Education institutions, it is worth mentioning philanthropic ones had already been partially providing quotas to scholarship holders, and legal dispositions for tax exemption were fully regularized. Instruction # 456, from October 5, 2004, foresees income-tax and contribution exemption for institutions adhering to the program and reinforces the following in Article 1: “The private higher Education institution, non-beneficent, profitable or not, which adheres to the University for All Program (PROUNI) under what Article 5 from Provisional Measure # 213 from 2004 foresees, will be exempt during the period foreseen in the agreement signed, from the following contributions and tax:

1. Contribution to Financing Social Security;

2. Contribution to Workers’ Fund;

3. Social Contribution on Net Profit;

4. Legal Entity Income Tax.

§ 1st. Exemption will be calculated on top of profit as foreseen in the caption in case of clauses III and IV, and on top of determined income in case of clauses I and II, resulting from the occurrence of activities related to higher Education, undergraduate studies or specific sequential courses.

§ 2nd. Bearing in mind what clauses III and IV of the caption foresee, the learning institution must determine exploration profit referring to the activities on top of which exemption is calculated, according to what Article 2 and income tax law mention.

Certain autonomy in the use of these resources by the private sector may be understood from the legal text. If the Brazilian public higher Education sensibly generates better quality than the one supplied by the private sector, as proven along the several years of evaluation conducted by the National Course Examination (despite criticism presented against this examination, it has become a parameter for society), how may public funding spent to finance course supply be controlled if this private supply offers no quality guarantee?

Around 400 thousand people have shown interest in PROUNI. A hundred and twelve thousand, eight hundred and twenty-seven vacancies in 1,103 private institutions were supplied in the first semester 2005. There are partial (50%) and full scholarships, depending on the candidate’s family income.4

4 “University. In a few days, PROUNI scholarship attracts many candidates”. Folha de Sao Paulo, December 8, 2004, p. C-7.

Results from the affirmative policy agenda, such as PROUNI, will only be equated in the long run, depending on the State control it is submitted to.

Conclusion

Despite the differences among the Southern Cone and Latin American countries in general, one may observe the tendency toward higher Education expansion with a predominant increase of private institutions.

The consequence of this scenario does not only lie in a growing process of elitism in higher Education resulting from populations’ impoverishment, but also, above all, the risk of decrease in education quality due to the loss of State control over learning.

According to the Brazilian Constitution, learning is considered the right of citizens and the duty of the State, which may delegate such duty to the private sector under determined conditions. With the transfer of resources from the public sector to the private one, supervision and control of governmental instances tend to be intensified, but they may not guarantee quality in the learning provided to scholarship holders.

It is of utmost importance to reflect upon a new model of public policies for higher Education adequate to South America’s reality, especially to the countries belonging to MERCOSUR, as well as its prospective members. Although not even the European Community has been able to reach a homogeneity capable of forming an integrating project, it authorizes, by means of the Bologna Letter, students to accomplish their university studies in any of its member countries. They have been working toward this direction since historically speaking we have been facing a rapid process of information and education globalization.

These integration proposals, however, must necessarily come from the very countries which will apply them, thus rejecting ready-made models imposed from the outside, such as what happened with World Bank’s demands.

The Latin American university must search for its own identity, respecting each country’s peculiarities, yet bearing in mind the material resources are scarcer in this part of the world than in the Northern hemisphere, which does not allow for an uncritical adoption of models copied from rich nations.

On the other hand, the difficult experience suffered by Southern Cone countries should be taken into consideration and serve as a new parameter to transform higher Education and make it accessible to all. Nevertheless, it must above all provide an environment to generate new knowledge since, in face of new paradigms, there is no higher Education without research.

Brazil presents the most critical situation in relation to the proportion of youngsters reaching higher Education. It is also the country which mostly conducted privatization, aiming at fulfilling a demand for higher Education and increasing the number of students reaching this level.

The proposed objective has not come true because the number of people who can afford studying is small and tends to be reduced due to low rates of economic growth in the country in the last decades.

Unfortunately, there are neither magic formulae nor ready-made recipes enabling the increase in the number of people with higher Education, without public investment. The issue is in reality still beginning to be discussed under a new approach. This has been generated by the recent realization of the impossibility of reaching desired levels of university expansion solely through an increase of private institutions.

A suggestion remains, therefore, to pose this issue to the academia and university students, proposing the discussion of the issue presented here, an issue still not closed and far from a conclusion. It must be reinforced that this issue should not interfere with educators’ posture, who must resist and fight for the university to fulfill its function of producing and spreading knowledge under any financial or public-policy agenda circumstance. Thus, what justifies the continuation of the University as a social institution is the knowledge excellence it may produce and share.

Under these terms, the present study aims at contributing to clarify the issues related to higher Education through a comparative analysis of the Southern Cone countries form the perspective of existing public policies.

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