ABSTRACT
In the early twentieth century, while attending high school had already become a realistic prospect for every American teenager, the poor included, provided they were white, in Brazil something similar to that is only produced in the 1970s. American higher education becomes overwhelmingly public and widespread in the aftermath of World War II. In Brazil, a first attempt at massification takes place in the late 1990s – and under the primacy of for-profit private schools. The implications of such a model are very serious for the aspirations of a consistent, sustainable, and coherent development model. The second milestone, circa 1995, was a federal reform that induced schools to more clearly assume their legal status: either companies or nonprofit institutions. A policy designed to reform education must be systemic – an integrated policy for the whole system, from the nursery school to the graduate program.
