Planning for the higher education system in the past involved designing, implementing, and evaluating a set of envisaged policies, strategies and operational actions for the medium and long-run. In Brazil, however, this sort of planning was virtually abandoned and replaced by short-term planning, partly as a result of the interplay of political forces and political options which did not identify expansion of public schooling as a priority, and other contributory factors, such as diminishing economic growth rates and an increasing foreign debt. Policies adopted by the Brazilian government over the last two decades inadequately dealt with several problems encountered by the system, including the governance, autonomy and accountability of public universities. After an introduction, the second section reviews the evolution of higher education policies in Brazil in recent years. The third section discusses some features of the relationship between public universities and the state with regard to autonomy, governance and accountability, and the final section addresses some of the challenges that are posed by rendering public universities accountable to society. Sixteen references are included. (LPT)