ABSTRACT
The article deals with two inquiries launched in the 1920s, organized by the journal O Estado de S. Paulo (1926) and the Brazilian Association of Education (1928), about higher education in the country. In both, the respondents reflected on the possibility of creating universities in Brazil, what would be their purposes and the formats that they should take. Based on the hypothesis that the uses of notions of “elite” indicate the political meanings associated with the formation of centers of high culture, the ties between the currents of political thought and the diagnoses and propositions formulated in the respective inquiries were investigated. The conclusion was that the inquiry of the Brazilian Association of Education was guided by the nationalist ideas of Alberto Torres and foresaw the creation of a national university, while the survey of 1926, in the section devoted to secondary and higher education, was based on the regionalism of Júlio de Mesquita Filho, designing the foundation of a São Paulo university.
Keywords:
Educational survey; Higher education; Political thought; Alberto Torres; Júlio de Mesquita Filho.