Building a University from Existing Schools
The institution now known as the Federal University of Minas Gerais was founded as the University of Minas Gerais, abbreviated UMG in Portuguese. On September 7, 1927, state leader Antônio Carlos Ribeiro de Andrada approved Law No. 956, establishing the university from four existing higher-education institutions in Belo Horizonte: the Law Faculty, Engineering School, Medical Faculty, and School of Dentistry and Pharmacy. Dentistry and pharmacy belonged to a single constituent institution; their separate disciplines did not make five founding schools.
The university’s official development plan traces the Law Faculty to its foundation in Ouro Preto in 1892, the medical and engineering schools to 1911, and the dentistry and pharmacy courses to 1907 and 1911 respectively. The significance of 1927 was therefore the creation of a common organization, rather than the beginning of local professional education from nothing. The university was not yet a federal institution. Its 1935 statutes still described it as a free university and specified that both the university and its constituent schools retained separate legal personalities.
Funding through Separate Assets
The founding law authorized the state government to establish four separate endowments, whose income would support the respective schools, and permitted the issue of public bonds or other credit operations for that purpose. Each endowment remained distinct. If a beneficiary school closed, lost federal recognition, or failed to comply with the law and implementing regulations, its endowment would revert to the state. State support thus depended on continued operation and compliance with rules; it did not erase the schools’ existing asset boundaries.
The 1935 statutes made these arrangements more specific. Assets allocated under the founding law could not be merged with the schools’ original property. The rector collected the relevant bond interest each January and July, but could release it only after the council approved the school’s accounts for the preceding year. Each school contributed an equal share of the university’s common administrative costs, with the remaining interest used to maintain and develop teaching. The institutional union thus rested on both separate assets and common oversight.
From the Founding Law to Shared Governance
Francisco Mendes Pimentel was appointed the first rector on November 10, 1927, while serving as head of the Law Faculty, where the initial rector’s office was also located. The founding law provided for the rector’s appointment by the state leader. The University Council comprised the heads of the schools and three professors elected annually by each school’s faculty assembly, and was responsible for reviewing budgets and annual accounts. The rector could veto expenditure that departed from the purposes of the funding.
Governance arrangements later changed. Under the 1935 statutes, the University Council submitted a shortlist of three candidates from which the governor appointed the rector. Council membership included school heads, representatives of professors, representatives of livre-docentes, graduate representatives, and the president of the central student organization. The statutes also required regular meetings and publication of their minutes. These provisions show the development of clearer rules for representation and procedure in shared decision-making, but the arrangements of 1935 should not be projected back onto the university’s founding day in 1927.
Professional Teaching and Preparation for Admission
The 1935 statutes placed effective teaching alongside cultivation of a spirit of inquiry. Each school was required to provide facilities for demonstrative and practical instruction, with internal regulations specifying course sequences, methods of demonstration, and student participation in exercises. Alongside regular courses, the statutes listed advanced study, specialization, and university extension courses for the wider public. The university was not merely adding a name above the four schools; it was also attempting to establish a common teaching framework across different professions.
The transition from secondary school to university received separate provision. The statutes permitted supplementary secondary preparatory courses. Hollerbach’s 2019 study notes that the university preparatory courses introduced in 1936 had four tracks: law, medicine, science and engineering, and dentistry and pharmacy. Students studied for two years before taking entrance examinations. These were post-foundation measures preparing students for admission, not a fifth founding institution of higher education, and should not be confused with the university preparatory college reorganized in the 1960s.
Student Assistance within a Fee-Paying System
The early university had to address whether students could afford its fees. Article 83 of the 1935 statutes allowed students without financial means to register without paying immediately, but limited the arrangement to 5 percent of each school’s students. This assistance was a form of loan: beneficiaries had to promise repayment, with an agreed due date no earlier than three years after graduation, and return the money to the university student-assistance body. It was therefore conditional deferred payment, rather than universally free admission.
Articles 108 and 109 further allowed the assistance body to receive donations, subsidies, and repayments, and required the professors’ organization to consult the central student organization on scholarships, medical care, and hospital services. These provisions show that the university incorporated financial and health difficulties into its institutional arrangements. Yet the existence of an assistance mechanism in the regulations does not by itself prove that every student in need actually received help.
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Federalization and Renaming as Separate Stages
On December 16, 1949, Federal Law No. 971 made the university a federal institution. Its constituent units had expanded from the original four to seven, including schools of architecture, economics, and philosophy. The law retained the legal personalities of the university and its schools, along with administrative, financial, and teaching autonomy. Existing assets remained under the management of the relevant institutions, while the federal budget also provided funding for development and research.
Federalization did not immediately change the name. The university’s official development plan explicitly records that the name Federal University of Minas Gerais and abbreviation UFMG were adopted only in 1965. The founding union in 1927, federalization in 1949, and renaming in 1965 were thus three distinct events. Its early history was a process in which professional schools gradually established financial oversight, shared governance, teaching standards, and student support while retaining their own institutional foundations.