Brazilian higher education system is considered mixed, with institutions of different administrative natures and organizational models—public, philanthropic, and for-profit private institutions. In this way, they seek to organize their coexistence in society by organically creating a kind of division of competences: institutions more focused on academic research and institutions more focused on the immediate demands of the labor market, both contributing to the socioeconomic development of the country. Since 2017, political and economic issues in the country have brought forth proposals for changes in the model of public universities, specifically proposals for charging different types of fees. These proposals are not new in the agenda-setting context—they resurface from time to time, yet without success. The mentioned context gains notoriety due to the particular inclusion of different actors in this discussion, such as the Federal Supreme Court and the World Bank. From this, there arises an urgency to understand how a possible fee imposition in public universities would be applied and its structural effects, both internally and externally, for society as a whole—considering that gratuity is practically a prerequisite for the maintenance of public universities in their current form. These are the main objectives of this research.