This text aims at analyzing the programs of University for All (ProUni) and Brazilian Open University (UAB) as products of the Lula government higher education expansion and democratization policy. Some issues like the great number of poles, their dispersion and distance from the headquarters of the promoting institution, as well as the lack of an evaluation mechanism to assess the quality of the education offered by the participant institutions, are challenges faced specifically by ProUni. As far as those two programs are concerned, some issues emerged related to the model of the classroom instruction pole which has been adopted and the concept of tutoring and its impact on the configuration of the teaching staff of universities. Also, significant improvement has been verified in the recognition that distance education does not limit itself to a commercial and privatizing educational strategy, but it must be studied in terms of its utilization as a state policy and in terms of the new institutional and pedagogical issues it raises.
distance education; ProUni (University for All); UAB (Brazilian Open University); higher education expansion; higher education democratization; evaluation
