Unifran: história, desenvolvimento e novos desafios.

Abstract

Since the republic proclamation, and in a more intense way, since 1930, the public-private opposition has been dominating the Brazilian educational scenery, varying the actors and the main papers according to the times that these disputes happen. This opposition, in spite of the specific particularities of every historical moment and of the private interests that permeate the conflict, has been harming the formatting of a more united and appropriate politics for the social, cultural and economical transformations that transcend the society. In the higher education specific case, it is added to this fact the imposition, starting from the 1968 reform, of an specific formation model that should converge for the indissociability among teaching and researche, through academical structures that embraced the universality field. Inside this context, the increase of the demand for vacancies in the higher education since the 60s, in conjunction with the government politics for the sector and the experienced economical development of the country, the number of private schools increased. This fact divided the institutions into two groups, the elite group, formed by the few public ones that could associate teaching and researche, and the mass group, constituted mainly by the private institutions, that have been concentrating on the teaching activities according to the market. Contrarily to the own reform, the last ones began small and without many resources, as isolated universities and, paradoxically, they started to assist the middle class population that couldn't reach the public universities. Contextualized in the 60s, 70s and 80s, a period where a great part of the Brazilian society saw the education as a public good, therefore non-tradable, and they defended the public and unpaid school for all, that situation consolidated a negative image of the private institutions, considered by many as a second category schools, without teaching quality and with exclusively profit interests. Since the end of the 80s, some institutions became universities and, authorized for opening of courses, they had an accentuated growth, which allowed a great investments in infrastructure and faculty, improving the teaching quality and, consequently, their image in front of the society. However, the investments in structure were not followed by a strategic planning that, according to the competition, the regional subjects and the specificity of each institution, positioned them inside the new Brazilian educational market reality, reorienting their development and objectives. With all of those considerations as backdrop and inside of the History of the School Institutions research line, this work makes a case study of Unifran, University of Franca.