As relações entre o público e o privado no processo de expansão do ensino superior no Brasil: democratização ou mercantilização?

The present study analyzes the expansion of Brazilian superior education, investigating how the public and the private sectors are inserted in this process, taking as analysis dimensions the philanthropic actions, the democratization and the mercantilism. The study had for general objective to analyze the dynamics of the expansion of superior education in Brazil, investigating how it configures the overlap between the public and the private in this process. More specifically was tried: a) to understand the process of participation of the non-state public, state and private sectors with lucrative goals in the expansion of superior education; b) to analyze the limits between the democratization and mercantilism in the process of expansion of superior education; c) to analyze the mechanisms that express the privatization in the process of expansion of superior education; d) to investigate, in a program of the government, how is materialized the overlap between the public and the private, in the expansion of superior education. In the development of the study, was adopted as theoretician and methodological way a historical and critical perspective, because is considered it allows to understand the mediations between the inquiry subject and the historical context in which it is developed, allowing, this way, the true explanation of the studied object. About the technician procedures, it was adopted documentary and bibliographical research. Also, secondary data were searched on the main governmental web sites (INEP, SISPROUNI, INEP, PNUD; IBGE) which produce statistics on superior education and sponsors of private institutions of superior education, as example ABMES and the Court of Accounts of the Union, amongst others. The study results had delineated a picture that allows to evidence that has been occurring, in the country, a process of expansion of superior education, marked for the articulated participation of the public state, private with lucrative ends and private without lucrative ends sectors, but it is distinguished in recent years the prevalence of the private sector with lucrative ends. In result, it is concluded that this process of expansion cannot be considered as dimension of the democratization because it occurs by means that move it away from the education as a right to be placed in the scope of the market, changing the right into a service that is appropriated by mercantile relations