This work intends to demonstrate how the large expansion in the higher education system all over the world since the 1970s results in the incorporation of market logic in the system of public management for higher education. However, such feature of public policies that has marked the vast majority of systems for management of higher education in contemporary societies has allowed isolating universities that enjoy academic reputation from those policies, keeping them as exclusive niches for members of social elites. The analysis of the Brazilian case shows an even more dramatic picture than the international one, since here, having higher education increases rather than reducing the effects of original status on social-economic status.
Higher education system; Outsourcing; Inequality; University; Social-economic status; Educational policy; Institutional model
