The debate about democratization of higher education in Brazil is a recurring theme, and ensuring access is a central issue in these discussions. Treat the "democratization of higher education" means in tackling issues relating to access a greater number of students to this education level. This article has as main object to analyze the public politics of access based on the mapping of Free Public Institutions of Higher Education in the Santa Catarina State, considering for the mapping the IBGE’s mesorregional geopolitical division. This is a survey of interpretive qualitative approach. The research corpus consisted of IBGE’s data and information provided by the institutions. After the data analyzed, we can say that 37.5 % of free public higher education institutions that offers more than three upper courses are concentrated in the Florianópolis’s region, in detriment of others Santa Catarina’s regions. It is found that only 3.39 % of municipalities in the state have free public Institutions of Higher Education (HEIs) that offers more the three courses.