PSYCHOLOGY EDUCATION IN THE CONTEXT OF DEMOCRATIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION
higher education; Psychology Education; democratization.
The higher education in Brazil carries a structure that privileges the interests of the bourgeoisie and excludes
students from the working-class. In this way, the elitism that is a striking element in the Universities, has
also characterized the Psychology Education throughout its history. Therefore, it is pertinent to ask: this
segment of the population that has historically been excluded from access to higher education goes through
the democratization policies to have more contact with Psychology Education? Have the democratization
policies, of the last ten years, contributed to a possible "anti-elitism" of Psychology Education? Thus, this
work aims to analyze the scenario of Psychology Education in Brazil, in the context of the democratization
of Higher Education. And as specific objectives: characterize the current panorama of expansion and
distribution of Psychology courses in Brazil; and identify which factors of the policies of democratization
reverberated in the Psychology Education. For this, an investigation was carried out using public domain
information located in a database of the Ministry of Education (MEC) and the National Institute of
Educational Research Anísio Teixeira (INEP), collecting information in microdata from databases such as e-
MEC, Census of Higher Education and ENADE. The main results show that Psychology courses are
distributed geographically heterogeneously in the Brazilian regions. The profile of the students has shown
changes concerning ethnic issues, about the number of students benefited by scholarships and financing,
besides the predominance of the night course, which may lead us to assume that the Psychology course is
composed mostly of student-workers.