BETWEEN EXPANSION AND DECLINE: THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE DROP IN ENEM REGISTRATIONS IN THE PERIOD 2017 - 2021
Public Education. Access to Higher Education. Democratization of education, affirmative actions, and educational expansion.
At a time when affirmative action policies in public universities are being debated, and the National High School Exam (ENEM) celebrates its 25th anniversary, this research project aims to analyze the cycles of expansion in higher education and the recent decrease in the number of participants in the main entrance modality to the country's universities. The research seeks to understand the motivations behind the recent changes in participation indicators, which are emblematic of the second cycle of democratization of higher education. Faced with the diversity of explanatory factors for the phenomenon, the text retraces the history of the exam, questioning whether it could represent a milestone in the break of the last cycle of enrollment expansion experienced by the country in the last 20 years.