Institutional differentiation and private sector participation are key dimensions to understand the process of expansion of higher education around the world. In Brazil, although the private sector is dominant, the differentiation between higher education institutions is still weak, what can be an explanatory factor of the high level of inequalities in access. Drawing upon data from the 2007 National Household Sample Survey (PNAD), this paper examines the extent to which the process of differentiation impacts inequalities in access to higher education in Brazil. The results indicate that the access to vocational higher education is less socioeconomically selective than to academic institutions, and that the restructuration of the Brazilian higher educational system would benefit from the expansion of technical colleges.
Higher education; Institutional differentiation; Educational inequalities