Abstract:

The Brazilian education is a national issue, but only in 1996, Congress and the President had established a law to regulate this issue. LDB - Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Brasileira, the Law of Guidelines and Bases for Brazilian Education. The creation of the LDB was the first step to organize and provide standard references for a huge country, with a wide spectrum of educational needs and a very recent government investment in education. As the country of Brazil, education still developing, and seeking their profile.
One of the main topics in the LDB is the organization in two blocks: Educação Básica – Basic Education and Educação Superior - Superior Education.

The organization of basic education:
i) Educação Infantil – Infantile Education;
ii) Educação Fundamental – Fundamental Education;
iii) Ensino Médio – Medium Education.

The organization of Superior Education:
i) Graduação - Graduation,
ii) Pós-Graduação - Postgraduate.

To present the original meaning the terms were translated, and not to make any comparison with the education systems in other countries. This is the real structure for Brazilian education from children to the adults. As other result of LDB, private and state institutions divided the Superior Education effort.
Another major theme in the LDB, is the requirement of a national plan for a decade of investment in education, by cities and states in Brazil the plan must be prepared and is the primary device for the federal government to invest in education. However the Brazilian state, nowadays, is holding more than two papers in this scenario, they regulate, conduct annual census and maintain some universities, the federal universities.

Organized and conducted by INEP - Insitituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira, the National Institute for Educational Research Anísio Teixeira is the annual census. INEP is part of the MEC, Ministry of Education of Brazil. The goal to INEP is provide data and information about education structure in Brazil. A special study provided by INEP is a census of higher education in Brazil. Every year INEP promote the effort to collect data from each of the Universities or Colleges in Brazil. The data collected are:
i) Number of teachers,
ii) Degrees of teachers,
iii) Amounts of students : in the first year and last year ,
iv) Universities and courses for regions, states and cities of Brazil.

This report provides a framework for qualitative analysis. For this article were collected from the site of INEP, a decade of data from higher education, provided by the Census of Educação Superior. Data organized in years to provide the vision decade, developments and accumulated. In this decade of study, some facts are:
i) The expansion of private institutions,
ii) The consequent expansion in numbers of students,
iii) E learning as an option for graduation.

The data used were produced by each of Universities, the census is not a requirement, but provide the data is a step in a program conducted by INEP annual evaluation. Because of that is right to assume that the data collected may be different from in reality. The second phase of the census, a team of auditors do some tests and checks to ensure the data provided.
The purpose of this article is to produce an image of Brazilian higher education over a decade.

Keywords:

Brazilian superior education, superior education census, Brazilian structure for higher education.