Resumen

SPAGNOLO, Fernando; CASTRO, Cláudio de Moura  y  PAULO FILHO, Walter. Enclaves de qualidade em universidades de massa? O Programa Especial de Treinamento (PET) da CAPES. Ensaio: aval. pol. públ. educ. [online]. 1996, vol.04, n.10, pp.05-16. ISSN 0104-4036.

Brazilian higher education becomes increasingly massified. Under those conditions, one may ask where Brazilian intellectual leaderships will be prepared. One possible solution is to create quality enclaves inside mass institutions, as done by a program of CAPES (the Brazilian Agency for Post-Graduate Education) called PET (Special Training Program). PET selects the best students in existing institutions and keeps them full time in small groups where they work together and are expected to display an academic performance vastly superior to that of their colleagues in the larger institution. The PET program was inspired by an experiment conducted from the fifties on by the School of Economics of the University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). The essay describes the history of the fellowship program at the UFMG as well as the development of PET. Despite the absence of systematic evaluations, first hand observation of the program seems to suggest that its graduates display levels of performance vastly superior to that of their colleagues which do not participate in the program. There is also the suggestion that the presence of an on-going PET program improves the quality of teaching of the entire institution. The paper concludes discussing the future of PET; as well as some of the most critical issues in its operation.

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