University for All Program (PROUNI): Who gets what, how and when?

Abstract

The central theme of this article is the Programa Universidade para Todos (PROUNI), created by the federal government in 2004 aiming at the expanding access to higher education in the country. We analyzed the politics with reference to the proposal for the definition created by Lasswell (1936). I try to identify which actors will have won what, when and how, from the political process developed during the formulation of the program. My working hypothesis was constructed from Pinto (2004) which has suggested that private institutions of higher education would start to pressure the government for resources to overcome the situation diagnosed early in the last decade, when rates of idleness vacancies were walking up 740,000. I analyzed the main mechanisms PROUNI: access criteria, types of scholarships, the qualitative requirements of education and institutional control mechanisms created to monitor the implementation of policy. As a result, I conclude that social actors privatists were successful in influencing government decisions in favor of market expectations, resulting in the ratification of the thesis Downs (1999), for which the actors have their income affected by a policy public better informed and are always willing to participate in discussions that involve its definition.