ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the recent growth of the private higher education sector in Brazil. It provides an overview of market structure, growth, demographics, and concentration of private higher education in Brazil using recent available microdata. The chapter summarizes the antitrust response to the significant mergers in the industry, and the case study of Anhanguera follows. Non-public, non-religious higher education institutions (HEIs) have been permitted in Brazil since the 1950s. There are three types of HEIs: Faculdade, Universidade, and Centro Universitário. In the late 1990s, the National Education Council allowed higher education degrees to be awarded through Distance Learning (DL). Anhanguera started in the mid-1990s as did many other private HEI institutions. A few faculty members took control of a non-profit HEI and started managing it under a new name, focusing on business, social science, education and law degrees. By 2007, Anhanguera started its expansion through mergers.
