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- Superior education in Brazil:
There are public and private colleges and universities in Brazil. There are public institutions maintained by the Federal government (the majority), by the States (a few)
and by municipalities (very few).
The tuition in public institutions is entirely free to the students; lodging is very rarely provided, usually for students who come from other cities; books and other
learning material is not provided; restaurants are usually subsidized.
Public universites are usually better than private ones. For a long time, governments were the only entities willing to invest the massive amounts of money required to
create and maintain good universities. Until today, the absolute majority of Brazilian scientific researchers are found in the public universities (very little research
is funded by private colleges or private corporations).
In recent years, with the creation of Provão (a system to evaluate the quality of superior institutions - see link further below), private institutions have been struggling
to improve their standards, and the quality gap between public and private colleges has been narrowing.
- Access to Universities graduation:
Institutions, both private and public, have relative freedom to select their alumni. Even though a few institutions have been using the results of ENEM (tests which are
periodically applied to the students of high-school) to evaluate candidates, the main means to select alumni is by a process called vestibular.
Vestibular is adopted by practically all public universities, because the number of candidates is usually superior to the number of vacancies offered. Vestibular is a test
open to all students who have completed highschool (similar to American GMAT, but the preparation of tests and evaluation of results is up to each college); the students with
the best scores qualify to enrollment.
The vestibular of public universities rank candidates by intellectual abilites only; factors like abilites in sports or family background are not relevant. Some private
institutions adopt the practice of sponsoring high level athletes. In consequence of this system, the vacancies in the most sought after courses (Engineering, Laws,
etc) in public colleges are taken by candidates from the upper and middle class, who can afford to have a good fundamental and secondary education. The poorer usually
resort to the private institutions, where competition is lower.
Recently, a few active policies have been adopted to give more opportunities to minorities . The Federal University of Rio reserved vacancies to the poor (people under a
certain income level); at the University of Brasilia, vacancies were reserved to black and brown people (the policies are controversial, and are still under discussion).
- Access to post-graduation:
Most mastering and doctoring courses occur in public institutions; in some cases, even in public institutions, tuition is paid for. Institutions have freedom to select
alumni; requirements usually include recommendation letters and curriculum evaluation.
- Other topics:
Federal Institutions of Superior Education
Complete list of federal institutions, separated by Regions/states.
Provão - (The Big Test) - A system to evaluate the quality of Brazilian universities
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