Public Policies and Higher Education in the 21st Century: The Presence of REUNI in Small and Medium Cities in the Brazilian Northeast

Abstract

In the first fifteen years of the 21st century, especially after the year 2003, Brazil showed itself with important transversal policies, from government policies of a national nature, to local policies. In this sense, the present work attempts to present the main public policies developed at the beginning of this century, with the main objective of approaching educational policies aimed at offering free higher education. In view of this, we highlight the importance of the creation of the Universidade Federal Rural do Semiárido (UFERSA), implemented in 2005 in the medium-sized city of Mossoró - Rio Grande do Norte, which later expanded exponentially to other cities with smaller urban functions in the state. At first, a theoretical methodological study was carried out on the subject, then a survey of secondary and official data from the university studied, in a third moment, the information relevant to the subject was organized and selected, together with the treatment and organization of the research. In this wake, the program for the Restructuring of Federal Universities, Reuni, gained relevance, which, in addition to creating Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), contributed to the expansion of new campuses, courses and structures in different spheres of the country. Based on this study, we can see that until the beginning of this century, education provision, especially at federal HEIs, remained very concentrated in specific areas of the country, culminating in regional and intraregional disparities in the distribution of universities and enrollments. However, we show that after the 2000s, especially after 2005, Brazilian educational policies were preponderantly present at different scales.