Higher Education, Development, and Inequality in Brazil and South Africa

Abstract

This article has the premise that South Africa and Brazil spaces share contextual and geopolitical characteristics with a history of great inequalities, racial and gender discrimination and these and other related factors serve as barriers constraining education. Considering the remarkable expansion of higher education systems in both countries on the last 25 years, and its uneven effects, some questions are raised as a challenge in this article. Does this growth in enrolments create high quality or “world class universities” in these countries? Is it possible to find South African or Brazilian universities in the international rankings of institutional higher education? Has such expansion produced a full democratization of educational opportunities? Or, in other words, does any skilled and hardworking student, regardless of his/her social background, have equal chances of access to the best courses and universities? In order to try to answer these questions, we begin characterizing the expansion of higher education systems over the last two and a half decades in both countries. Regarding policies of access by poor students to higher education system, we taking in account and compare some initiatives in both countries, such as Reuni, Fies and Prouni in Brazil, and National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), in South Africa. Our analysis, following the tradition of sociological research, understands that the mode of operation of higher education institutions stands out as one of the key factors in the mechanisms and social conflicts that increase or reduce inequalities. Focusing on the basic distinction between public and private sector, for Brazil, and the persistence of distinction between historically black and white institutions, in South Africa, we try to show that both countries improved the access to higher education systems and managed to create some world-class institutions. Even so, social and gender inequalities persist and there are too few such institutions, especially in Brazil.