A interface público-privada no programa Universidade para Todos – PROUNI : uma análise de política pública para educação superior no Brasil

Abstract

The process of expanding and democratizing access to higher education in Brazil has been one of the main targets of the Federal Government in the last decades regarding social promotion. In that scenario, there are several strategies and programs resulting from public policies aimed at facilitating the access to the higher education, which intend not only to increase vacancies in public universities but, in a complementary manner, to allow the usage of vacancies in private higher education institutions. The present which analyzes the publicprivate interface that permeates the programs of expansion of vacancies in higher education, with emphasis on the University for All Program (PROUNI), that offers integral or partial scholarships in private institutions to students who meet the income and socio-economic profile requirements established by the program. Looking for understanding the legal bases that drive public policies for higher education, the dissertation analyzes education as a social right and contextualizes higher education within the legal rules that delegate to the State the duty of the education at its various levels. With that, it brings a reflection about the process of access to the higher education, considering that the basic education is condition to reach the university degree. It becomes necessary to understand the context in which such change in educational level occurs and the latest data on the evaluation of high school graduates in order to identify why public investments are not concentrated in public universities, but have been destined, in great volume, to institutions maintained by the private sector. Based on that scenario, it studies the legal nature of Prouni, and excludes such program from the category of Public-Private Partnership (PPP), in spite of the interface between the Public Power and private initiative. In the course of the research, it was noticed that Prouni's proposal is adequate as a public policy strategy, however the numbers indicate that it is a program which, proportionally, brings more benefits to the higher institutions than for the students benefited or who wish to be so, since there is no public management to check the coherence between public investments (in the case of Prouni, through fiscal renunciation) and the actual number of scholarships awarded to students.