The growth of Law Schools in the Brazilian Higher Education Expansion Panorama, 1964-2019

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2023/69071

The article aims to reconstruct the growth of Law Schools from the national perspective
in two periods of higher education expansion in Brazil. In the first period, from 1964 to
1980, the paper emphasizes the role of private institutions in the expansion and the
dominant conception of undergraduate studies as being vocational. In the second period,
from 1996 to 2019, it thematizesthe legislation created after the 1988 Constitution, which
includes the changing conception of university education, and the processes of
commodification and financialization of higher education. Lastly, the paper deals with full
and partial distance learning in undergraduate degrees and discusses the role of the
Brazilian Bar Association in face of the expansion of the Law Schools. The article
contributes to the comprehension of a phenomenon that is frequently mentioned by the
literature but has not yet been analyzed from empirical data. Grounded on the changes
of legislation and policy, and on the data from the Statistical Yearbook of Brazil and Higher
Education Census, the paper shows that the growth of Law Schools followed the expansion of higher education in Brazil in both periods and that the area’s main
particularity is that the Ministry of Education did not authorize the creation of schools
with full distance learning for undergraduate Law degrees in the period.

Keywords: Undergraduate studies; Law; Expansion; Private institutions.