The growth of Law Schools in the Brazilian Higher Education Expansion Panorama, 1964-2019

Abstract

The article aims to reconstruct the growth of Law Schools from the national perspective in two periods of higher education expansion in Brazil. In the first period, from 1964 to 1980, the paper emphasizes the role of private institutions in the expansion and the dominant conception of undergraduate studies as being vocational. In the second period, from 1996 to 2019, it thematizes the legislation created after the 1988 Constitution, which includes the changing conception of university education, and the processes of commodification and financialization of higher education. Lastly, the paper deals with full and partial distance learning in undergraduate degrees and discusses the role of the Brazilian Bar Association in face of the expansion of the Law Schools. The article contributes to the comprehension of a phenomenon that is frequently mentioned by the literature but has not yet been analyzed from empirical data. Grounded on the changes of legislation and policy, and on the data from the Statistical Yearbook of Brazil and Higher Education Census, the paper shows that the growth of Law Schools followed the expansion of higher education in Brazil in both periods and that the area’s main particularity is that the Ministry of Education did not authorize the creation of schools with full distance learning for undergraduate Law degrees in the period.

Keywords:
Undergraduate studies; Law; Expansion; Private institutions