ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a brief historical overview of the development of Brazilian higher education. It demonstrate that the humanities in Brazil are characterized by the prevalence of the private model of education and a focus on training teachers, a process that call professionalization. Historically, the humanities undergraduate programs in the country have followed the same path of training a professional elite, lacking a commitment to research and innovation. The chapter argues that the ambivalent place of the humanities in Brazil is a symptom of the fragility of national educational policies. The educational policies of the Federal Institutes contributed to mitigate the already mentioned distortions in the roles played by the different levels of education in Brazil. The public system would not be able to respond to the increased demand for higher education, thus having the private alternative played a role in democratizing access in Brazil, despite its limitations and shortcomings.
