This article discusses the Brazilian distance education in the context of expansion of higher education, observed after LDB/1996. The focus of this analysis is the evaluative and regulatory actions of state and political counterpoint of private enterprise, whence derive three major tensions, which are: the attraction of private over public; the quality problem in the binomial presential education versus distance education; and, finally, the controversies regarding the distance education model to be assumed (or not) in Brazil.
Distance education; Higher education; Educational policy
