2.7% of higher education institutions have a maximum grade – 04/02/2024 – Education

Only 54 higher education institutions in the country achieved the maximum score in a federal quality indicator, the IGC (General Course Index), related to 2022. This represents 2.7% of the total of 4,998 institutions evaluated.

The data was released this Tuesday (2) by Inep (National Institute of Educational Studies and Research), the body of the MEC (Ministry of Education) responsible for the evaluation. The results can impact the functioning of institutions, in addition to serving as a quality parameter.

The IGC scale ranges from 1 to 5. The first two ranges (1 and 2) are considered inadequate, and institutions may suffer sanctions from the MEC. On the other hand, concepts 4 and 5 are considered quality, and 3 indicates the minimum expected.

The majority of universities, university centers and colleges appear ranked at grade 3. This has occurred over the years.

The 2022 results also reinforce the trend seen over the years of a difference in quality between public and private institutions. Furthermore, a greater number of federal companies performed better, while private companies were not as successful.

Of the federal institutions, 85% of the institutions evaluated achieved IGC 4 or 5 — they were 68% in 2018, at the end of the previous evaluation cycle.

Among private for-profit companies, 21% reached this level in 2022. In 2018, it was 18%.

Taking only state institutions into account, 41% were in bands 4 and 5 of the IGC in 2022. They were 30% in 2018.

The vast majority of private institutions (66%) had IGC 3. In federal institutions, this percentage was 15%.

But as the largest number of higher education students in the country are in private institutions, these data indicate that almost 5 million students are in these institutions with a grade 3. In federal institutions, 821 thousand students are in institutions in band 3 of the IGC.

The IGC is calculated based on the average of the last three years of another government indicator focused on courses, called CPC (Preliminary Course Concept). This data is combined with other structural information, such as postgraduate information.

The data always refers to a three-year evaluation cycle, anchored in the completion of the Enade (the test taken by students) for a set of courses.

“No institution with postgraduate degrees was in range 1, and those with more postgraduate degrees are concentrated in the higher ranges”, said the director of Higher Education Assessment at Inep, Ulysses Teixeira. “Which leads us to believe that institutions that reach relevant maturity also have reverberations in graduation.”

Inep also released data related to courses, based on CPC results, with data from 8,934 degrees. There are also differences in these indicators between public and private, as well as a quality disadvantage in distance learning degrees.

The 2022 result refers to 13 bachelor’s degree areas, including administration and law, in addition to another 13 areas linked to technology courses.

Among private for-profit companies, 27% have a CPC in bands 4 and 5. This percentage rises to 71% in federal companies and 47% in state companies.

While 38% of face-to-face courses achieved grades 4 and 5, this same level was achieved by 26.6% of distance degrees. There is a greater concentration of online courses in CPC 3: 65.2% compared to 51.9% in the case of face-to-face courses.

Sinaes (National Higher Education Assessment System) has been in force since 2004. It comprises the construction of indicators designed to establish an overview of the quality of courses and institutions, in addition to inducing improvements. The indicators are also the basis for supervision and regulation of the sector.

The model has already suffered several criticisms due to the limitation of achieving its objectives and the tendency of institutions and courses to remain in band 3. An audit by the TCU (Federal Audit Court), for example, showed that the system has not been able to express the quality level of university courses in the country. On the contrary, in many cases it overestimates the quality of graduations.

Inep presented proposals for discussion to improve the indicators. Among the ideas are the integration of data on graduates, such as employability, conditions for offering distance courses and improvement of questionnaires.