Por uma tipologia do ensino superior brasileiro: teste de conceito

Abstract

Although the great differentiation that exists in Brazilian higher education is widely known, and even if different types of institutions have different objectives and produce different results in the undergraduate, graduate and research levels, the full implication of these differences is not recognized by the legislation or by the evaluation system adopted by the Ministry of Education in Brazil. Neither is the public, i.e., current and future students and their employers, informed of these differences. The objective of this work is to present a classification or typology proposal for Brazilian higher education institutions that clearly identifies these differences, and that can serve as a basis for a system of information and evaluation procedures that take into account this variety of characteristics, objectives and results. This is done by grouping institutions that have similar profiles, from the point of view of size, legal status and involvement with teaching and graduate activities, and assessing the extent to which differences in type correspond to differences in the characteristics of faculty, students, areas of activity and performance. In the final part, we discuss some implications of this typology for the higher education evaluation system and, more broadly, for improving the quality and performance of higher education in the country as a whole.