"Evolution of the Effectiveness of the Brazilian Higher Education Constitutional Principles (1988-2021): Comparative Analysis of Institutional Types and the Regulatory Trajectory of the Sector".
Effectiveness; constitutional principles; higher education
This thesis aims to answer the following question: how did the historical evolution, from 1988 to 2021, of the effectiveness of the fundamental right to education, at a higher undergraduate level in Brazil, take place, considering the practical institutionality acquired by the educational constitutional principles that involve: i ) equal conditions for access to higher levels of education (access); ii) freedom to teach and research (academic freedom); iii) the pluralism of pedagogical ideas and conceptions and the coexistence of public and private educational institutions (pedagogical pluralism and institutional diversity); and iv) the guarantee of quality standard (quality)? After the 1988 Federal Constitution, the focus of the Brazilian State's higher education policies, reflected in the official and public indicators, was guided by the continuous expansion of student access, especially in private institutions (mostly for-profit, from the end of the 1990s). The evolution of the implementation of educational constitutional principles, sometimes gained, sometimes lost effectiveness, more or less intensely, depending on the principle, period and segregation by “administrative category” or by “academic organization”. The main objectives of the study are: i. To analyze the historical evolution (1988-2021) of the effectiveness of the fundamental right to higher education with a focus on the institutionalization of constitutional educational principles (access, academic freedom, pedagogical pluralism/institutional diversity and quality) observed through the aggregation of measurements of the main existing indicators in public and official databases; ii. To perform the comparison between administrative categories and between academic organizations, in a matrix form, establishing the temporal correlation with the main educational regulatory policies based on the reference indicators for each of the educational constitutional principles; and iii. To propose general guidelines for a new regulatory design that incorporates, among other issues, the regulatory structure, regulation and financing models, in addition to aspects such as the type of institutions, purposes and data collection and use. The research will use official data made available by the entities responsible for research and regulation of higher education (mainly INEP, MEC, CAPES and CADE).