The democratisation of access and success in higher education: the case of Portugal and Brazil

Diana Dias, Claisy Marinho-Araújo, Leandro Almeida and Alberto Amaral

Higher Education Management and Policy, 2011, vol. 23, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: Given that higher education systems everywhere have opened to the masses, this paper analyses to what extent this phenomenon has really been accompanied by an effective democratisation of access and success in Portugal and Brazil. It looks at the expansion of higher education and discusses how the political system and higher education institutions have responded to the need for better educated populations and increased demand for tertiary education. Equity of access is analysed by comparing the ratio of candidates from different socio-economic backgrounds to overall capacity. This indicates that the apparent democratisation of academic access is in fact only relative; on this basis, there are grounds for concern as disadvantaged social backgrounds seem to generate high rates of academic failure and dropout.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1787/hemp-23-5kgglbdlrptg (text/html)
Full text available to READ online. PDF download available to OECD iLibrary subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:edukaa:5kgglbdlrptg

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Higher Education Management and Policy from OECD Publishing Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().