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1 Introduction

A distinctive feature of Brazilian higher education today is its differentiation, and Brazil is perhaps an extreme case, both in terms of institutional settings and ownership. Among its more than 2300 institutions, there are examples of almost anything: from small, family-owned, isolated professional schools to huge research universities with annual budgets of more than $ 2 billion, and private for-profit conglomerates with more than a million students. As one would expect, this institutional maze gives rise to extremely diverse types of organizations. While in general, public universities are better endowed and more institutionalized, there are clear and significant differences even among institutions belonging to this sector: universities with a stronger commitment to graduate education tend to have a more active research profile, and are more susceptible to values and expectations linked to disciplinary cultures. Public universities committed to undergraduate education are more susceptible to the agenda supported by unions (both academic and staff unions). Federal institutions (and most state owned institutions) are more vulnerable to pressures coming from governmental bodies than the powerful São Paulo state universities.

Within the private sector, market forces and governmental regulations are the main drivers for growth, differentiation, and institutional development. As a rule, private institutions are confined to a mass education market where low tuition is the main differential. In this segment, the most common and traditional format is the small, isolated professional school offering a few undergraduate programs in the same professional track. Nevertheless, in the last 10 years, this segment experienced a strong process of consolidation that led to the creation of a number of large, for-profit institutions. These new institutions are able to offer dozens of different undergraduate programs in a diverse array of fields, and to explore new market niches such as lifelong learning and taught master programs. The education they provide tends to be standardized and cheap, as a commodity sold in a competitive, low-cost market. However, because of their scale, they also have resources for different responses targeting specific demands for undergraduate and vocational education. Some of them have university or quasi-university status (being recognized as “university centers” by the Brazilian authorities), which gives them relative autonomy vis-à-vis the bureaucratic controls imposed by government. Another relevant segment in the private sector is the one composed of a small number of elite private institutions. Targeting students coming from high- and middle-class groups, they tend to be innovative both in teaching and in exploring their staff’s competences to offer professional masters and other graduate programs, as well as consulting services for companies, government agencies, and private clients. These institutions operate in a more differentiated market where quality and prestige, not price, is the main driver. Data for this chapter come from official documents and studies produced by different stakeholders available on the Internet and from articles published in Brazil’s main newspapers and magazines. These documents were analyzed in order to produce an accurate picture of the ongoing national debate regarding higher education policies.

2 Conceptual Framework

Stakeholder analysis is a tool developed mostly by scholars in management and administration fields. It aims to evaluate how individuals, groups, and organizations that have an interest in a given sector or institution will react to specific projects or policies (Brugha and Varvasovszky 2000a, b; Crosby 1992). As noted by Weible (2007), the main shortcomings of the stakeholder analysis are its narrow focus, which tends to make its results quickly outdated, and the lack of a sound theoretical basis for understanding the nature of the links holding together different stakeholders when it comes to supporting or opposing a policy or program. To overcome these limitations, we will combine the stakeholder framework with the theoretical construct known as Advocacy Coalitions Framework (ACF), proposed by Sabatier and collaborators (Sabatier 1988; Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1999; Weible et al. 2009).

The most relevant contribution of the ACF to the stakeholder analysis relates to understanding the nature and patterns of coalitions that organize different stakeholders inside a policy system. This framework supposes that the main stakeholders tend to be specialized in one policy system and that they tend to seek alliances with other stakeholders who hold similar beliefs (beliefs from the first and second tier). Stakeholders in the same coalition tend to engage in “nontrivial degrees of coordination” (Weible et al. 2009, p. 99), in order to promote policy venues favoring their preferred institutional design for the system and policy alternatives. ACF also supposes that stakeholders’ options are bounded by cognitive constraints that organize both their perception of what is at stake and what are the gains and losses associated with each policy alternative. It is the strength and long-lasting nature of these beliefs that explain the relative stability of the coalitions between different stakeholders, which in turn explain the long-lasting nature of the political dynamics that characterize a given policy system.

The three main premises of this framework are the following. First, any policy area with a substantive scope is conceptualized as a “policy system,” where the focus is the interaction between actors from different institutions with interests (stakes) in it. Second, the public policies (goals, programs, and instruments) produced by a policy system express implicit “policy theories” about the nature of the problem that is (or should be) addressed by the policy system. In this sense, they incorporate causal relationships related to the way a given policy, program, or instrument will operate and how it will change the reality toward a more desirable state. Third, the political beliefs supported by different stakeholders express different “policy theories” and contain values that can be ordered into a three-tiered hierarchical order. In the first tier, there are the normative dimensions that articulate the general values and attitudes guiding actors’ views on the policy process as a whole (e.g., beliefs regarding the role of the state versus markets, in regulating the provision of public goods, liberalism, nationalism, and so on). The second tier is the core policy belief or “logic” (Maassen and Stensaker 2011) that span across the entire policy subsystem. Examples are the desirability (or not) of institutional diversity in higher education, the relative importance of assuring equal representation for all internal stakeholders in the university’s decision-making process, and so on. Finally, the lower tier comprehends instrumental beliefs linked to the operation of the policy: the supposed consequences of different policy designs, such as the adoption of different models for university autonomy or the use of quotas for expanding access. According to this framework, most changes in the beliefs that inform decisions inside a policy subsystem (and thus, policy learning) occur in the last tier, and thus have only minor impact over the core beliefs sustained by each advocacy coalition.

In the next sections, we will use this conceptual framework to analyze the policy dynamics in Brazilian higher education and the role of various stakeholder groups in it. We will start by describing the social and political environment resulting from the country’s recent experience with the democratization processFootnote 1 and the effects of the economic reforms since the late 1980s. Afterward, we will analyze the profile of the main stakeholders, and reconstruct the patterns of alliances that characterize the country’s higher education policy.

3 Core Issues in Brazilian Higher Education Policy

In the last decade of the twentieth century, Brazilian society was reshaped by the combined forces of two long-lasting macropolitical and economic processes. The first is the democratization process and the second is the long-lasting economic crisis that hit the country in the 1980s and the economic reforms that helped to overcome it. Recounting the history of the process of democratization is beyond the scope of this chapter, nonetheless it is worth pointing out two key features with major impacts on the country’s higher education sector. First, there is the relevant role played by some of the key actors within the public universities in the struggle for democratization. As noted by Schwartzman (1993), political activism in Latin American universities is an ingrained tradition, dating back to the early decades of the twentieth century. At the end of the twentieth century, the fight for democracy in Brazil mobilized all organized sectors in the country, with a special place for leaders of student movements and some of the most prestigious academics. Fighting for democracy unified all the political forces within public universities. One of the legacies of this experience is the great visibility and strong legitimacy of public universities have vis-à-vis other political actors.

The so-called “democratic pact” that provided legitimacy to the new political regime also encompassed a strong demand for equity and social inclusiveness. For most Brazilians, the struggle for democracy was also a fight for a brighter future. Thus, the issue of social inclusiveness has strong legitimacy in Brazil, being present across all policy systems (including higher education). As a result, it faces no resistance, i.e., it is deeply institutionalized (Olsen 2010).

The second process pertains to the long-lasting effects of the economic, financial, and fiscal crisis that hit Brazil in the 1980s. A major root of the crisis was the exhaustion of the growth strategies based on import substitution policies (Bacha 1986). In the second half of the twentieth century, the country’s policies related to higher education and science and technology can be traced to this import substitution heritage (Schwartzman et al. 1995). At that time, the primary goal of the science policy was to develop scientific capability in all fields. From the point of view of educational policies, this goal led to a “trickle-down” perspective where all efforts were concentrated in training the elite of scientists and engineers. This, in turn, led to policies that concentrated resources and quality control at the top of the educational pyramid, while paying little attention to the lower levels. Thus, it comes as no surprise that in the 1970s, the efforts for building a strong and well-organized system of graduate education inside the public universities were concomitant with the neglect of basic education (Castro 1986), a situation that persists to this day.

The so-called “lost decade” of the 1980s, when the economic crisis deeply hit the country, had a strong impact over the country’s science and higher education landscapes. When the crisis finally ended the in mid-1990s, the agencies in charge of science and higher education were disorganized, depleted of their best human resources, and disconnected from the core policy decision bodies. For the public universities, the 1980s were years of penury, when academic salaries and resources for maintaining the conditions for teaching and research were drastically reduced.

The harsh times provided a lasting lesson to those in charge of the science and technology agencies: in order to ensure access to the funds required for their operation, it was not enough to trust in the prestige of science. Support for science should be connected to the central policies related to economic development. In order to fulfill this role, science should be steered to address the relevant problems perceived as central in the country’s quest for economic development. At the end of 1990s, the science and technology agencies (S&T agencies) evolved to become corporate actors (Braun 1998), with an identity and a policy agenda of their own, not necessarily the same as those of the scientific community.

These developments set the framework for the reforms in the S&T policies that took place by the end of the 1990s. These reforms had a strong impact over public research universities, where graduate education and research are more establishedFootnote 2. Their main features were the adoption of instruments for steering research toward economic and societal relevance, imposing a more competitive environment for research support, and reinforcing the instruments for evaluation. The reforms enlarged the space for autonomous decision-making by the agencies’ specialized bureaucracies, amplified competition, and put a premium on team networking and the publishing profile of researchers. In the reformed arena for science policy, new players have also gained leverage: the public universities’ authorities, senior management, and regional interests. In fact, the 1990s saw many initiatives from regional and, subsequently, some local authorities. In the 2000’s, many states launched or strengthened their own regional research foundations and established new administrative branches in charge of local S&T policies. In the same period, the Ministry of Education, in charge of the federal universities and for overseeing the private sector, experienced a strong process of professionalization, developing new capabilities for institutional and program evaluation.

4 Stakeholders in Brazilian Higher Education

This section describes the profile and role of the main stakeholders, internal and external to the higher education system, and explores some of the core issues behind their mobilization and influence.

4.1 Internal Stakeholders: The Academic Profession

The most conspicuous internal stakeholder in any higher education system is the academic profession (Clark 1987; Enders 2001). In Brazil, the academic profession is as diverse and stratified as the higher education institutions which they inhabit. Data collected in national surveys of the academic profession have consistently provided indications of the presence of at least four different professional profiles within Brazilian higher education institutions, as succinctly described below (Schwartzman and Balbachevsky 1997, 2014; Schwartzman and Balbachevsky 1993).

4.1.1 Professional Oligarchy

The first type of stakeholder is the traditional professor as was earlier understood in Brazil since early nineteenth century, when the first professional schools were establishedFootnote 3. Typically, they are distinguished lawyers or medical doctors who also teach, thus preparing the next generation of professionals in their fields. For them, the more relevant issue is the autonomy of their school vis-à-vis the university’s central authorities. The ideal governance mode (Olsen 2007) for them is a university as a “confederation of schools and faculties,” where each subunit could have as much independent decision-making capacity as possible. Until 1968, Brazilian universities were organized as a kind of federation of professional faculties (of Law, Medicine, Engineering, Dentistry and others). A Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters was added in the 1930s, to prepare teachers for secondary education and also as place for undertaking research. The university reform of 1968, inspired by the North American model (Jencks and Riesman 2002), introduced academic departments and research institutes, but the traditional professional faculties kept their identity. In the late 1970s, it was inside some of these professional schools and faculties that the most relevant institutional innovation across the public sector, the so-called “Foundations” came to the fore. The latter is a not-for-profit private institution, founded by academics from one school. From a legal point of view, foundations are independent and private, yet in practice, they are identified with the school and hold relevant links with the faculty’s decision-making structures. As such, they function as an operational arm, and are in charge of services such as consultancy, contract research, continuing education, and professional postgraduate education (including the Master of Business Administration, MBA). They benefit from the prestige associated with the school and, in exchange, they provide a source of third-stream resources (Clark 1998). This enables the school to update its infrastructure, expand and qualify its staff, and supplement academic salaries—critical assets when it comes to attracting competent academics. Sustaining a high degree of internal autonomy is also relevant for protecting the Foundations against other interests inside the university. The strongest channels of influence over this professional oligarchy are the regional and federal professional boards. These boards are legally in charge of certifying the professionals, and thus they have a strong influence over the curricula. This role is especially relevant in the case of the most powerful professional boards representing the traditional professional groups such as the Federal and Regional Councils of Medicine, Engineering, and the Brazilian Lawyers Association.

4.1.2 Scientific Community

This stakeholder group encompasses those with a profile that closely resembles the one the classical literature identifies as the scientific scholar (Ben-David 1971; Polanyi 1962). They have good academic credentials and have access to a full-time contract, which enables permanent involvement with research activities. Although most of them have teaching responsibilities at the undergraduate level, they tend to focus their academic commitment at the graduate level, a crucial asset when it comes to competing for financial support from major federal or regional agencies. In their role as researchers, they sustain strong domestic networks with their peers, and some have strong links with the international community. Most academics with this profile are employed at public universitiesFootnote 4.

For most members of the scientific community, their daily institutional experience revolves around their department, research center, or laboratory where they concentrate their research activity. For them, autonomy is also a relevant issue. In their view, only strong, autonomous research units are capable of resisting the interference coming from the more or less politicized environment surrounding the university. Their dependence on external support, combined with their experience with designing and implementing projects to sustain their research, reinforces a strong entrepreneurial ethos (Etzkowitz and Webster 1998). These academics are proud of their institutions, but are more or less oblivious of the occasional attempts coming from senior administrators to control or evaluate their performance. Their major concern is the ranking achieved by their graduate program in the nationwide peer evaluations organized by the Ministry of Education. The constraints that are more conspicuous to them are the controls and demands posed by the agencies responsible for allocating research funds. Nonetheless, it is worth noting the active role members of the scientific community play in the decision-making process inside these agencies, both at the regional and federal levels, mostly through peer review committees and also as consultants (policy advisers). Since the end of 1970s, the scientific community has also been a major actor in defining the policies for graduate education and has played a key role when it comes to the evaluation of graduate programs.

4.1.3 Unionized Lecturers

This stakeholder group refers to academics that hold stable and full-time contracts at public universities, but do not meet the standards of professional achievements usually attributed to a scientific scholar. The majority neither possess a doctoral degree nor are actively involved with research activities. Their responsibilities tend to be circumscribed to teaching activities at the undergraduate level. Because of the lack of academic credentials and limited performance as scholars, they face difficulties in accessing external funds to support research. Unionized lecturers are also almost entirely disconnected from their national and international peer communities. Hence, their professional identity is neither defined by their professional degree, as is the case of the professional oligarchy, nor by their individual achievements as independent scholars such as the members of the scientific community. Instead, their identity is locally rooted, based on their institutional affiliation and the small group of colleagues with whom they share daily experiences. In a sense, academics belonging to this group tend to sustain a “semiprofessional identity” (Etzioni 1969) since they tend to emphasize intrinsic rewards such as personal satisfaction (of being a good teacher) as opposed to extrinsic ones such as peer recognition or professional status. This fact explains why this group so fiercely opposes any attempt to introduce intrainstitutional differentiation based on merit and/or prestige. For them, the only acceptable grounds for differentiation are those produced by externalities, in principle accessible to everyone, like seniority. The strength of this subculture inside public universities sheds light on the roots and centrality of the egalitarian ethos across Brazilian academe, which is sustained by the academic unions. The latter tend to recruit their supporters among academics with this profile.

Unions are not only opposed to any kind of evaluation and merit-based career decision but also are fiercely against any differentiation among public institutions. As such, they oppose the development of entrepreneurial activities inside the public universities; the growth of the private foundations linked to university institutes and faculties; the influx of any source of third-stream money (Clark 1998); or any other development that could entail differentiation and autonomous institutional development. Academic unions are strong not only at the level of the university’s structures, but, given the centralized way careers and salaries are defined in the federal sector (and in most state level sectors), they also sustain stable communication channels with authorities both at the federal and regional levels, as well as good access to the general media.

4.1.4 Private Sector Academics

This group consists of academics teaching at private institutions. They cannot count on job stability and spend long hours in the classroom in order to earn a living. In the past, these professionals had no further education aside from the bachelor level and were almost entirely ignorant of the traditional academic norms and cultures (Merton 1968; Clark 1983). The new regulatory demands regarding academic credentialsFootnote 5 of the teaching staff of all higher education institutions induced major changes in the profile of these professionals. Since the late 1990s, the proportion of academics with acceptable academic credentials working in the private sector has been increasing, introducing new dynamics and tensions across this subsector of higher education. Some private institutions have taken advantage of the new opportunities targeting a new market niche composed of students from wealthier families. These dynamics supported the rise of an elite-oriented private subsector, where competition is mostly based on quality rather than on the level of tuition fees being charged.

Nevertheless, the bulk of the private sector is still confined to a kind of commodity-like market for mass undergraduate education (see Neves in this book). In the last decade, the growth of very large for-profit universities reinforced trends toward commodification. Inside these institutions, all courses are framed in the same way, and contents are standardized in handouts distributed to all students attending similar courses. For the academics working in these universities, the most relevant issue is to improve contractual conditions and to expand their classroom autonomy.

In short, academics in the private, for-profit sector are weak stakeholders. In the few elite-oriented institutions, they may have stronger roles inside the institutions, but that is all. Because they work in for-profit institutions, they have no access to public funds for research, and thus are more or less permanently excluded from the dynamics surrounding science (Gibbons et al. 1994). In the mass-oriented institutions, lecturers are almost powerless. While some of these institutions may value a good teacher and support some of his/her professional needs, as a whole, academic staff are treated as a commodity, to be hired in times of growth and dismissed in difficult times.

4.2 Other Internal Stakeholders

4.2.1 Student Movements and Unions

Until early 1990s, the organized student movements and unions were strong players, not only in the subsystem of higher education but also in the major political arena. Since then, these movements narrowed their agenda to the internal life of the universities and lost influence and visibility in societyFootnote 6. They are articulated around a highly politicized agenda, centered on maintaining the public institutions free of tuition, and support a radical understanding of the democratic governance for universities, based in elections for selecting the central authorities organized under the rule of “one person, one vote.”Footnote 7 They also push for expanding the amount of public resources for education in general, and, in particular, for public universities.

Even if less relevant than in the past, student movements still control some relevant resources. In alliance with academic and employees’ unions, students often play a decisive role in the results of the internal elections that select university rectors in almost all public universitiesFootnote 8. They also have good access to the media and, most of all, they have “troops” that are easily mobilized for the fight and ready for radical actions that can magnify conflicts inside the universities, and in the general political agenda. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that all actors within the system tend to be wary of the reactions by this particular stakeholder.

4.2.2 Employee Unions

In the 1970s and 1980s, most public universities witnessed the growth of employee unions, organized to represent the interests of nonacademic staff. Most of these unions focus on internal affairs relevant for their audience, related to contractual and work conditions, careers, and salaries. They also sustain a more general, system-level agenda, which revolves around preventing tuition fees in public universities, sustaining democratic governance within universities, expanding the status of public servants to all university staff, including those performing contract work, and resisting any kind of performance-related evaluation and career decision.

While employees’ unions are weaker than other internal stakeholders and have fewer opportunities for mobilizing their constituencies (except when it comes to salary issues), they are good allies of both the academic unions and student unions, easily adding their forces to any struggle inside the university. They also play a relevant role in universities’ internal politics, particularly during electoral years.

4.2.3 Central Administration

In all public universities, the top hierarchy of the central administration is recruited among the academics and tends to share the views supported by them. Inside research universities, the authorities come from the scientific community and tend to put great relevance in issues related to research and graduate performance. In regional-oriented institutions, where graduate education is a minor endeavor, the university’s central administration tends to put emphasis on expanding undergraduate enrolment as a way to assure more resources from the government. Inside the latter, the university’s leadership tends to be more dependent on the internal constituencies, especially the academic and employee unions, and support the egalitarian agenda referred to above. Nevertheless, regardless of the specific profile, the leadership of all public universities faces an equal set of demands and impositions coming from the Ministry of Education, the research agencies of the Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Technology, and the National Council of Education.

Federal universities are highly dependent on the resources provided by the federal government. Salaries (for both academics and nonacademic staff) are controlled by the Ministry of Planning, while most of the resources for current expenses come from the Ministry of Education. Resources for investment in buildings and equipment must be negotiated directly with the Ministry of Education. Hence, it comes as no surprise that the latter has strong leverage in influencing the decisions inside federal universities. In recent years, the federal government has increasingly used this power to introduce relevant changes across all federal universities. In 2002, the federal government created a program providing additional support for universities willing to increase the ratio of students per academic staff, and introduce evening programs catering for nontraditional students, and quotas for poor students and minority groups (blacks and indigenous). In 2009, the Ministry proposed to unify the entrance requirements at the undergraduate level, through a nationwide exam organized by the Ministry of Education. While adherence to these programmes is optional, the decision of not accepting their terms implies giving up access to almost all extra money needed for improving the university’s infrastructure. It comes as no surprise that all these programs encountered wide acceptance among the federal universities.

In the private sector, the managerial structures of institutions are torn between two major forces: the demands coming from the market, and the impositions of public authorities. Private higher education in Brazil is under strict control of the Ministry of Education and the National Council of Education. While private universities have more autonomy when compared to other private nonuniversity institutions, they still depend on the Ministry for accrediting the degrees they confer, for maintaining their university status, and even for remaining in operation. At the same time, private higher education institutions also operate in a market where they must compete for students willing to pay tuition fees. As such, they need to consider the needs of current and would-be students, and search for alternatives to increase their share in a highly competitive market. Many of the recent developments in private higher education result from the responses by entrepreneurial private institutions to the new labor market demands for specialized training (Sampaio 2011).

4.3 External Stakeholders

The most relevant and well-articulated issue coming from the Brazilian society as a whole, especially from its more organized sectors, relates to access to higher education. Education has always been regarded as the main factor for social mobility. As alluded to earlier, the demand for expanding access to higher education has its historical roots in the “social pact” that supported the fight for democracy in the 1970s and 1980s, which is still relevant in today’s policy arena. Increasing access poses a particular challenge for public universities. The standard description of the differences between the public and private sectors in Brazil are as follows: public universities are free from tuition, but to be admitted, students have to pass very competitive entrance examinations. Private institutions charge tuition fees, but admission is easy. Given the fact that students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds attend private and more endowed upper secondary schools, they tend to enter public universities, and thus do not pay for a high-quality education. Students coming from poor families, whose educational backgrounds limit their ability to compete, enroll in the private sector and pay for an education of poor quality.

This description is not fully accurate, since low-income students can enter public universities in less competitive careers, and high-income students may choose to go to some of the existing high quality private institutions. Still, the images associated with the description given above are strongly rooted in the public imagination. They contribute to weakening the stand of public universities in the policy arena. In particular, they damage the legitimacy of the option of limiting the growth at the undergraduate level in order to strength the commitment to research and graduate (including doctoral) education. For the majority of the external stakeholders, the best measure of the social relevance of a public university is their intake at the undergraduate level, with special attention to the proportion of students from low socioeconomic and poor educational backgrounds. From this perspective, public universities are always on the defensive. When facing pressures coming from the politicians and the local authorities, they seldom have the strength to deny demands for opening new campuses, expanding programs, and increasing enrolment at the undergraduate level.

The issues of access and inclusion (i.e., equity) are particularly relevant for a small yet highly organized and belligerent actor, the nongovernmental organizations and grassroot movements fighting for racial equality. Given its colonial experience with African slavery, Brazilian society has always been marked by a strong correlation between race and social standing. While the country never experienced racial segregation as a policy or even as a strong cultural trait, a degree of ethnic prejudice has always been present in the country’s cultural and social institutions. This situation creates particular challenges related to social mobility and esteem for African descendants. Over the years, racial issues have led to the emergence of a number of grassroots movements that strongly support an active policy for the inclusion of racial minorities in the form of the adoption of quotas at public universities.

In the public arena, and especially among politicians, racial quotas have mingled with the demand for social inclusiveness, thus creating pressures for the adoption of policy measures assuring privileged access to public universities for the children of low income families, and, in particular, those that are both poor and belong to a politically relevant minority. Addressing these pressures, in 2012, the House of Representatives and the Senate passed a law imposing a 50 % quota (entry places at the undergraduate level) at federal universities for students from low-income families and minority groups. The proposal faced no relevant opposition and was enacted by the Executive in record time. The government also implemented other initiatives in order to face the popular demand for access into higher education. In 2002, it launched the program “University for All,” swaping fiscal benefits for tuition exemption for low-income and minority students in the private sector.

Another relevant external stakeholder are the members of the judiciary, in particular the members of the public prosecution and the courts. Members of the judiciary were highly active in the democratization process, and had a relevant role in the fight for the civil rights and liberties at that time. This past experience reinforced the proactive profile of the judiciary in many sectors of Brazilian public policy, mostly imposing interpretations of the law that forces an expansion in the coverage of policies and programs. This role is reinforced by the fact that that new democratic Constitution of 1988 includes detailed provisions for public higher education, and universities in general, either public or private (Ranieri 2013). The main issue that mobilizes the judiciary is preserving the character of public goods of the main products from public university activities. Thus, the judiciary tends to impose strong restrictions for the activity of the Foundations linked to the professional schools, views with suspicion all contracted activities, either in research or in teaching, imposes severe restrictions over the access and use of public funds, and strongly regulates the formal accountability of research funds both for the university as a whole and for the research teams.

The main concern from the business sector is to increase the number of professionals with higher education qualifications, assuring that their training fits with the needs of the labor market and improving the quality of general education. The lack of quality of education, both at basic and higher educational levels, is frequently mentioned as one of the major handicaps for Brazilian industry when faced with the new demands posed by a dynamic global environment. In spite of this, the industry can be considered as a rather weak stakeholder in Brazilian higher education. For example, it has not advanced clear demands regarding tighter collaboration with academia in the form of internships and/or technology transfers.

The Ministries of Education and of Science, Technology, and Innovation have a special agenda related to improving the country’s performance in the many indicators that are internationally recognized. This issue is central in the agencies’ struggle to increase their bargaining power vis-à-vis other sectors in the federal government. For this purpose, they have tended to concentrate resources in some major initiatives and to favor research carried out in networks linking consolidated research groups with emerging ones. Overall, these changes have led to the consolidation of some leading research institutions and have created a fierce competitive environment for research and graduate programs.

Finally, state and local authorities are also relevant stakeholders in science and higher education. Since the 1940s, regional elites, in particular those from the poorer states, have been actively involved in higher education policy making; pressing for new federal universities to be established in their territories, for channeling support to the federal universities placed in their regions, and in assuring that a percentage of the national resources for science and technology are invested in these regions.

Richer states are major players in the Brazilian higher education policy arena, with their own higher education and research institutions. The federal arrangement allows state governments to organize their own higher education and science systems in parallel with the Federal system and the private sector. Almost all the 26 states of the Brazilian Federation have their own network of universities and research foundations, in charge of supporting science and technology research relevant for the region. State universities are the sole responsibility of the state level government and are not subject to the Ministry of Education’s regulations or evaluation. While the poorer states are more dependent on federal aid, and thus, their state universities tend to abide by the general regulations created by the federal government, this is not the case of the richer states. In the more developed regions, state-owned universities are highly autonomous. The more striking cases are the three state universities in the state of São PauloFootnote 9. Since 1987, these universities enjoy ample and unrestricted autonomy. From that year on, they have had guaranteed access to close to 10 % of the state’s main revenue, a tax applied to all commercial or service transactions occurred within the state. The autonomy then granted to the São Paulo state universities resulted from a long and aggressive strike that united the academic staff and employees’ unions from the three universities, as well as the student movements. Thus, in this respect, autonomy was not an instrument of higher education policy, but almost an abdication of such a policy framework. At the end, the absence of external interference was beneficial to these rather privileged set of institutions. The state universities of São Paulo are renowned for their strong commitment to graduate education and research. The relative strength of their scientific communities has supported their rapid development and has ensured the responsible use of public funds.

The large list of stakeholders presented above is a clear indication of the complexity of policy dynamics in Brazilian higher education. Nevertheless, convergence can be observed, as these stakeholders combine forces in the struggle for shaping domestic higher education according to their deeply-institutionalized values and strategic interests.

5 The Main Advocacy Coalitions Present in the Brazilian Higher Education Policy System

Some of the convergent dynamics relate to intense massification of access to higher education (Trow and Burrage 2010) on the one hand, and the increasing relevance of higher education as a policy tool or instrument for enhancing social mobility and/or as an engine for promoting local/regional and national development (Cloete et al. 2011; Pinheiro et al. 2012) on the other hand. Accordingly, the system faces strong pressures for opening up the policy-making process (Gornitzka 1999) to other stakeholders. In spite of the added complexity created by the entrance of new players in the field, a careful examination of the main cleavages and the patterns of alliances in the area points to the presence of three main advocacy coalitions.

First, the utilitarian coalition, which brings together the perspectives from the private higher education providers, a relevant part of the business interests that are mobilized for the debate around the policies of higher education, the regional authorities, and the professional oligarchies. The core value unifying the participants of this coalition is the conception of higher education as a private good Footnote 10. Decisions about higher education policies ought to be informed mainly by the needs of the labor market, to address the demands for employability. Market needs should also inform the research agenda of the different fields of knowledge. This utilitarian perspective of higher education supports the use of the market mechanism as the best way to steer higher education institutions and supports differentiation of institutions and formats of learning as the best way to respond to different demands posed by the labor market (Teixeira et.al. 2006). In spite of these points of convergence, members of these coalition also diverge in relevant issues: the more relevant point of divergence regards the best format for university governance: while the private providers tend to favor a more hierarchical, service-oriented mode of governance, and the professional oligarchies tend to favor a more traditional format, where the perspectives of the academic oligarchy should prevail (Olsen 2007).

Second, the egalitarian coalition is composed of the unions in the public sector, the student movement, most of the top bureaucracy of the Ministry of Education, a relevant part of the central authorities at teaching-oriented public universities, the grassroot movements, some political actors in particular those placed on the left of the political spectrum, and the members of the judiciary. This powerful coalition sustains the perspective of higher education as a public good Footnote 11 , and sees the university primarily as an instrument for addressing social inequalities. This coalition also favors the institutional mode of governance based on the representative principle (Olsen 2007). Accordingly, the university’s main authorities should be chosen through internal elections with the participation of the academics, students and the nonacademic staff. For them, the ideal system of higher education should be one composed only of tuition-free public universities, organized under the same model, and supported exclusively by public funds. Unions also maintain that all public universities should be manned by a staff (academic and nonacademic) sharing a similar career structure in which seniority, not merit, should be the main criterion for promotion. For the members of this coalition, entrepreneurship and the private providers of higher education are evils that should be eradicated, or, at least strongly restrained. One relevant issue for this coalition is to curb all entrepreneurial initiatives inside the public universities. For the unions, this issue is tactical, since it is related to preserving equal incomes for everyone, so the fight for better salaries has the same relevance for everyone. For the external stakeholders in this coalition, this issue is strongly linked with the core value of the public good nature of the university. The access to second- and third-stream sources (Clark 1998, p. 6) means that at least part of the university’s facilities and products are being privatized. Furthermore, it also creates alternatives for institutional diversification, which constitutes another sin that should be eradicated.

Finally, the third and last coalition articulates the values and perspectives of the so-called academic entrepreneurs (Etzkowitz 2001; Jain et al. 2009), which encompass the perspectives held by the scientific community but also those of a relevant part of the senior bureaucracy from the agencies in charge of funding science and graduate education, as well as some of the central authorities at public research-intensive universities. For the members of this coalition, the university is conceived mainly as the place for supporting science. Forming the next generation of scientists and contributing to society with their knowledge are the main objectives of higher learning, and merit is the best way to organize hierarchies within and across institutions. Higher education is also thought to be a public good, but now it is because of the social relevance of its knowledge content and the central role it should play in the country’s path to development (Gibbons et al. 1994). For the members of this coalition the public support for the university and for the science should be justified on the basis of their contribution to the country’s quest for socioeconomic and democratic development.

For a member of this coalition, all higher education should be composed of public universities only, and differences among institutions should be based on merit. Hierarchies inside the universities and among them, as long as they express differences in achievements in science, are welcome. Nevertheless, some measures for preventing regional inequities are needed. The last issue is a core value in the views sustained by the agencies’ senior bureaucracy, but secondary for the science leaders.

The ideal way to organize the university is to understand the values sustained by the members of this coalition, with the ideal type described by Polnanyi in his seminal work on “The Republic of Science” (Polanyi 1962):

So long as each scientist keeps making the best contribution of which he is capable, and on which no one could improve (except by abandoning the problem of his own choice and thus causing an overall loss to the advancement of science), we may affirm that the pursuit of science by independent self-coordinated initiatives assures the most efficient possible organisation of scientific progress (Polanyi 1962, p. 3).

The strong individualism present in this perspective, shared by the above coalition, supports the autonomy of the university and, inside the university, the autonomy and independence of the different units that should work as “independent self-coordinated” bodies in the advancement of science. Entrepreneurialism is another strong value within this coalition, but it is not understood as measures to explore opportunities of gain in the external market or in a way to assure access to a third stream of resources (Clark 1998, p. 7). Entrepreneurship tends to be understood and valued when related to the initiatives taken by a research leader in order to support and expand her/his team. As such, it is perceived as a personal attribute, but not an institutional one.

6 The Interplay Between the Main Advocacy Coalitions in Shaping the Policy Dynamics in Brazilian Higher Education System

One way to understand the dynamics of higher education policies in Brazil is to observe the pattern of alliances and conflicts that articulates the three coalitions around the main issues present in the policy agenda. First, one can observe the strength of the alliance that supports policies for access to higher education. This is a central issue for at least two of the three coalitions active inside the policy system: the utilitarian and the egalitarian coalitions. It is not as relevant for the entrepreneurs, but it is not perceived as a threat for them.

A relevant norm that counts with strong support is the notion of higher education as a public good, e.g., through opposition to private higher education and to charging tuition fees at the public universities. This normative posture is rooted in the core values of two of the three coalitions, the egalitarian and the academic entrepreneurs. In fact, this is a strong consensus in Brazilian higher education policy. The public good nature of higher education is written in the country’s Constitution. This assumption creates a strong veto over any initiative related to charging tuition in the public sector and even casts doubt over the legitimacy of the very existence of the private sector. The litigious relationship between the private sector and government, described by Castro in this volume, has its roots in this core value shared by two main coalitions, and strongly ingrained in the Brazilian governmental bureaucracies.

A similar pattern can be identified supporting the internal representative system (de Boer and Stensaker 2007) as the mode of university’s governance, or a “democratic governance,” as it is known in Brazil. This norm is also supported by two of the three coalitions: the egalitarians and the academic entrepreneurs. For the former, democratic governance is the most relevant tool for preserving the political leverage of the unions in the university’s internal affairs, and also in the policy system as a whole. The support of democratic governance among the academic entrepreneurs is more problematic. Since the early 1990s, some experience with democratic governance provides good examples of the dangers this arrangement may offer to the research endeavor inside the university. In many cases, the representative system has allowed for the victory of candidates supported by alliances between academic and employee unions articulated around a populist agenda. This kind of alliance tends to undermine the merit-based rules that, from the point of view of the academic entrepreneurs, should govern access to the institution’s resources. This governance mode can even lead to a victory of radical members from the egalitarian coalition that threatens the researcher’s autonomy regarding her/his research agenda, especially if it includes contracted research and/or proprietary rights over knowledge.

For the high bureaucracy in the science agencies, democratic governance is the main source of uncertainty of the universities’ support for research and entrepreneurship. Democratic governance also creates obstacles in the way the university responds to external stakeholders, because it tends to close the institution’s governance, making it responsible only to the internal constituencies. Finally, it undermines the position of the more entrepreneurial sub-units, usually perceived as a threat to the egalitarian rules that should prevail inside the university.

In spite of all these stumbling blocks, democratic governance is strongly supported by almost all members of the academic entrepreneurial coalition. Even if some particular situations are to be deplored in private, the public defense of democratic governance is always voiced by the leaders inside this coalition.

This pattern of response cannot be understood without taking into account the emergence of a normative value that sanctifies the representative system as the only acceptable alternative for university governance “in a democracy”Footnote 12. Due to the country’s past experience with authoritarianism and the lessons learned in the democratization process, democratic governance has been converted into a policy taboo (Tannenwald 1999) in Brazilian higher education policy. Its desirability is never contested and all stakeholders tend to assume that this is the only way a university is supposed to be governed. One major effect of this norm is to delegitimize any debate on different alternatives for university governance. The hierarchical mode, usually found in the private sector, is only tolerated. In fact, some exigencies posed by the regulatory bodies in the government to the private institutions can be interpreted as efforts to introduce some of the democratic ethos inside these institutions.

In such an environment, preserving the autonomy of the sub-units inside the university is viewed as a vital issue for the academic entrepreneurs and for the academic oligarchy. It is opposed by members of the egalitarian coalition and it is not equally relevant for other constituencies within the utilitarian coalition, hence the support for this principle cannot count on unrestricted support in the Brazilian debate on higher education.

One final issue that has received increasing attention relates to the role of higher education as a tool or instrument for enhancing the country’s innovative capabilities and global competitiveness (Lester and Sotarauta 2007). This perspective brings together the idea of the university as an entrepreneurial entity and the social and economic relevance of the knowledge produced by science (Clark 1998; Gibbons et al.1994). The issue is strongly supported by members of the utilitarian coalition, but count only partial support from entrepreneurial scientists. For the last coalition, this notion is conditional to the principle that the initiatives have to come from the research community, and not from outside, as a demands posed by the market or the society. This pattern of support creates a very peculiar way of understanding innovation. In this view, the core innovation activity is the work done by the scientists. Science should provide the best solutions for the problems faced by society and, because of its disinterested nature (Merton 1968), science and scientists are the best judges regarding the relevant needs facing society. Thus, in order to be relevant (and innovative), science should pay attention to the problems (“grand challenges”) facing society and the search for adequate solutions, which should then be passed to the enterprises (preferably a public enterprise, but private is acceptable, as long as it is a national enterprise) responsible for their transformation into products and services. In other words, the main instrument for innovation policy should be to provide support for research programs in areas deemed by the scientists as strategic for the country (Stokes 1997).

7 Conclusion

This chapter provides a picture of the main stakeholders present in the Brazilian higher education system, listing relevant information regarding the main issues, values, and resources that are mobilized by each stakeholder for shaping higher education policy. Brazilian higher education is a well-known case of extreme differentiation. Because of this, the number of stakeholders relevant in the policy arena is very large. In order to understand the patterns of alliances between these different stakeholders, the chapter uses the framework developed by the advocacy coalitions approach. With the help of this theoretical tool, it is possible to map the main controversies and also the more relevant convergences that organize the debate around the future of higher education in Brazil.

The analysis presented here provides relevant clues for understanding the source of the main dilemmas faced by Brazilian higher education, as also depicted in other chapters in this volume. The main constraints faced by Brazil for building up a new social pact capable of enhancing the university’s legitimate position in the political and social order are posed by the values and expectations held by different internal and external stakeholders.