This article analyzes higher education policies promoted by the World Bank in peripheral countries in the 1990s and the first decade of the new century. It found that the central guidelines of these policies (diversification of institutions of higher education, schools and financing sources) were implemented in Brazil by the government of President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva. Higher education has been treated as a business and placed in the hands of public-private partnerships in higher education through management contracts. This process has led to the deconstruction of Brazilian public education as a social right and to the formation of a type of university suitable to the current phase of capital accumulation, particularly in a dependent capitalist country such as Brazil.
International agencies; Higher education; Brazilian universities
