Higher education in Brazil and Turkey (1989-2016): Expansion and privatization policy

Universities and the Higher Education System are at the heart of the transformations stemming from neoliberal-privatist policies. Neoliberal privatization policies gained ground throughout the 2000s, despite resistance from some sectors of society. In contrast to this resistance, such political model has been adopted by many developing countries, such as Brazil and Turkey, which have experienced in the last decades a pressure to adopt privative policies in relation to Higher Education (HE), at the same time as they face challenges to meet the growing demand of students for this level of education and quality improvement that allows an effective democratization of opportunities at the higher level of education. In the midst of complex problems, one of the directions that can be identified is the articulation of the expansion of higher education with privatism. In this line, the present study analysed the expansion and privatization processes of the HE in Brazil and Turkey, seeking to investigate, from the point of view of the development of the public and private sphere, the progress of higher education that occurred between 1989 and 2016. The period covered in the analysis is justified to contemplate the vigor of neoliberalism in the two countries from the end of the 1980s, as well as changes in the referred Systems of Higher Education, particularly after the beginning of the mandate of the AKP Party government in the year 2002 and the second Government of Lula, in 2009. Starting from peculiarities from the original point of view of the university in each analysed country, similarities and differences in the evolution of Higher Education Systems were sought. The focus of the monitoring of Brazilian and Turkish higher education, in comparative analysis, focused the axes of approach in the public and private HE Having as unit of analysis the Higher Education System of the two countries, the methodology used fell on comparative education. In the analysis of the processes of expansion and privatism in the HE, the observed variables were the following: quantitative growth of HE institutions; registration and access in public and private establishments; conclusion in the Higher Education System; public funding, and some programs for HE in both countries. The research verified, among the systems in Brazil and in Turkey, higher education in the scope of differences in the historical formation of each Higher Education System and the respective adjustments, changes in the legislation and the potential reorganization of the HE establishments towards a logic induced by the capital. The comparison of the historical configuration of the university in both countries evidenced the original presence of the private initiative in the HE in Brazil much more dominant than in Turkey, signaling the protagonism of one and another legal nature, the public and the private one, besides characteristics more elitist or massed in the respective Higher Education System. In the analysis of the variables compared, especially between the years 1990-2006, there was a greater voracity of privatism in the HE of both countries.