Given the expansion and diversification of the recent Brazilian higher education system, this article discusses possible trends for its modernization and democratization. The article seeks to develop issues on the values socially assigned to higher education diplomas. It focuses mainly on the relationship between the almost absolute dominance of a patrimonial vision on higher education and the fraying of scientific/ or pedagogical contents associated with various diplomas. Patrimonialism appears in the preference by BA at the expense of license and technological diplomas; in vocations socially marked; in the schedules and shifts of different courses; in the lack of interest on technical areas and in the pedagogy of cultivation. Moreover, the patrimonial view appears in the Dialectic of Knowledge and the Social Force of diplomas. The possible installation of a radical credentialism in Brazil allows for the analysis of the relationship between patrimonial dominance and the professional culture, indicating the limits of the higher education system democratization.
Higher Education; Credentials; Profes-sional culture; Patrimonialism
