A formação do ensino superior no Brasil como sistema e como campo de investigação

Since the last decades of the 20th century, higher education, in Brazil, as in other emerging countries, has undergone a great process of massification and diversification, both in terms of enrollments and in terms of institutions. Parallel to this great growth, there was also a notable increase in publications and research on the most varied themes and issues related to national higher education, in different areas of the social sciences. Today, it can be said that studies in higher education constitute a true autonomous field of knowledge in the country. The objective of this article was precisely to characterize, in a critical and historical way, the formation of higher education in Brazil as a system and as a field of investigation.