Abstract
This paper analyses the most relevant dynamics shaping the patterns of recruitment and promotion faced by academics in different sectors of Brazilian higher education. These patterns have been reconstructed considering two different dimensions: the consequences of the changes in the regulatory framework enforcing better academic credentials for the faculty of all institutions, and the degree of inbreeding and marked segregation produced by the institutions’ strategies for recruiting new scholars. Results provide evidence of strong convergent dynamics since the end of the 1990s. What will be the outcome of these changes, both for the public sector, but mostly for the private one, is still an open question. It will most surely depend on the strategies adopted by the institutions and also on the kind of regulatory framework developed by the government.
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Notes
- 1.
Following the Continental Europe tradition, Brazilian bachelor degrees are also professional degrees. As such, these schools are entitled by the Federal Government to grant bachelor degrees in the areas they are recognized as having competence (in a very bureaucratic mode of appraisal). Usually they have just a small number of programs, thus they are known in Brazil as Faculdade (Faculty). Some of them, bigger and providing training for wider number of professions, are called Federação de Escolas (Federation of Schools).
- 2.
In fact, this is the fastest growing segment in Brazilian higher education. In just two years, from 2006 to 2008 its share in Brazil’s undergraduate enrollments grew from 9.4 to 14.5 %. In 2012, the for profit universities were responsible for more than 30 % of all undergraduate enrollments in Brazil.
- 3.
For an overview of the Brazilian graduate education see Balbachevsky (2004).
- 4.
The most usual contract at the private sector is a part-time with payment according to work tasks, that may include teaching hours, coordination of programs, advising students and even doing some research.
- 5.
At the end of the 1980s, the annual inflation rates in Brazil had reached the stoning level of 480 %. To control the public expending was one of the main instruments used by the government in the successful program launched in 1994 to control inflation.
- 6.
Since 1998, Brazil also recognize a professional master program. Professional master programs is supposed to combine a strong academic core with a professional training. Academics linked to this kind of master program are supposed to have a good academic profile (measured by their academic outputs) and be reputed as good professionals. These exigences make the professional master’s program more demanding than the traditional academic one. This seems to be the main reason for the small number of professional master’s programs (395 programs in 2013), when compared to the traditional academic model (2894 programs in 2013).
- 7.
This information is even more impressive if one consider that the public sector answers for only 25 % of all undergraduate enrollments.
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Balbachevsky, E. (2016). Brazilian Higher Education: Converging Trajectory Patterns in a Diverse Institutional Environment. In: Galaz-Fontes, J., Arimoto, A., Teichler, U., Brennan, J. (eds) Biographies and Careers throughout Academic Life. The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27493-5_3
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