Brazilian university was born as a late-coming daughter of the European university, especially of the French model, which established autonomous colleges, later grouped into universities. This university is supposed to have been the work of philosophers and encyclopedists from the Enlightenment period. With Napoleon, the State took over higher education, promoting autonomous schools like the Ecole Politéchnique and the Ecole Normale, which to this day graduate professionals with a higher education degree. This model served the best interests of the industrial bourgeoisie, training elites outside the university system and was followed by Brazilian higher education during its early period. The history of Brazilian university, approximately 85 years old, is more recent in comparison to European countries, or even other Latin American countries, but it nevertheless made an important contribution to our development.Until 1930, Brazilian higher education did not include universities, although two had already been created, but not institutionalized: one in Rio de Janeiro and one in Minas Gerais. The first Brazilian university to be effectively institutionalized in Brazil was the University of São Paulo, founded on January 25, de1934, integrating existing autonomous colleges and creating the School of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters.In the 1950s, the Municipal Institutions of Higher Education (IMES) of the State of São Paulo come into being, at the initiative of the local rather than the state government. It is easy to understand that the lack of higher education for young people in the inland of São Paulo has led municipal authorities to realize the urgency of creating it.In this context, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate the influence of European higher education in the genesis and development of higher education in Brazil. The specific objective is to study the history of IMES in the State of São Paulo, which characterized urban education throughout the second half of the twentieth century. The key questions discussed are: How did European autonomous institutes influence the creation of municipal institutions (communal) of higher education in Brazil? What are the social and legal conditions that gave rise to IMES in the State of São Paulo in mid-sized cities in the 1950s?This is a quantitative and qualitative study of the history of IMES in the State of São Paulo. Data were obtained from the Brazilian education official agencies, the State Board of Education of São Paulo (CEE-SP) and the institutions surveyed, which when compared constitute original information. The theoretical analysis was based on Charle and Verger (1996), Luzon (2005), Schwartzman (1979), Durham (2005) and others for the European and Brazilian historical periods. In addition, the context and consequences of the creation of the IMES for the expansion and move inland of higher education in the State of São Paulo are described.

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