Comparative & International Higher Education 5 (2013) 71 Higher Education in Brazil: Different Worlds and Diverse Beliefs Elizabeth Balbachevsky a,* a University of São Paulo, Brazil Diversity is one of the main traits of Brazilian high- er education. The 2011 census (INEP 2013), which is the most recent data available for the entire system, registered a total of 2,565 higher education institutions (HEIs) in metropolitan areas and small towns around the country. Based on the law, all these institutions are entitled to grant bachelor degrees and supposed to pro- vide similar undergraduate instruction. However, the immense differences among them can be found in al- most any aspects: Small family-owned isolated schools coexist with huge for-profit universities with shares in the stock market. Likewise, highly competitive public research universities are established next to regional universities that are entirely devoted to undergraduate instruction. Inside the public sector, university is the most com- mon type of HEI. In the last few years, however, there has been a growth of non-university public institutions. Many vocational public secondary schools were upgrad- ed to higher education and allowed to offer vocational programs at this level. Meanwhile, public universities tend to be large, multi-campus comprehensive institu- tions. They may be owned by the federal government, state governments, and even municipal authorities. In general, the public sector offers good work conditions for faculty since 81 percent of the academics have full-time permanent contracts. Higher education in Brazil is not only diverse; it is al- so marked by strong, though informal, hierarchies. Within the public sector, the main line of division is the institu- tional commitment to graduate education, in particular, doctoral education (Balbachevsky 2013a). Graduate edu- cation is highly concentrated: only a small number of insti- tutions meet the requirements to offer graduate programs, especially at the doctoral level. Since the 1970s, graduate education in Brazil is organized around disciplinary pro- grams and subject to strong regulation and strict evaluation based on peer review (Castro and Soares 1986). Among the public universities, only a few, 21, according to the most recent data available, have a strong commitment to graduate education. Some of them are owned by the feder- al government, but others are owned by the states. These public universities have enrollments of, at least, 30 percent at the graduate level (masters and doctoral programs) and also a large proportion of faculty with doctoral degrees. Having graduate education as the main institutionalized site for research, these institutions serve as fully developed research universities (Durhan and Gusso 1991). On the other hand, all other public universities and institutions (a total of 263 public institutions) are strongly committed to undergraduate education. Within these institutions, graduate education is a smaller enter- prise and tends to be limited to the master’s level. Even so, institutions play a relevant role as regional sources of skills and knowledge. As thus, I propose to call them public regional institutions, regardless of the ownership (i.e., the federal government or some state or local gov- ernment). Private institutions represent more than 88 percent of all institutions and attract 73.7 percent of all enroll- ments at the undergraduate level. In the private sector, the most common institutional type is the isolated pro- fessional school that offers programs in a small number of professional tracks. 1 Most of the private sector is confined to a kind of mass market where the lower price charged for education is the most relevant differential. I label these institutions private mass-oriented institu- tions. They are open-door institutions catering for older students from poorer families that had no access to good quality education prior to entering higher education. In the last 10 years, this subsector has experienced a strong ____________________ *Corresponding author email: balbasky@usp.br; Address: Department of Political Science, University of São Paulo, Brazil.