MEC wants to create a fee for colleges to pay for higher education inspections

The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) is considering creating a new body within the Ministry of Education specifically to oversee private higher education with a budget financed by the educational groups themselves. The idea is similar to one that was already attempted by former president Dilma Rousseff (PT) in 2012 and which was resisted in the sector.

During Dilma’s time, the regulatory body would have an annual cost of R$43.4 million (without correction for inflation) with 550 positions for analyzing new requests for the creation of higher education courses in Brazil.

The body would be responsible for carrying out the necessary evaluations and studies to approve or not the opening of courses, which often do not have the necessary structure to serve students. Minister Camilo Santana states that there are studies that show that, given the volume of business in this sector, there would be conditions for the institute itself to have a large revenue.

“Higher education has grown enormously in Brazil. […] We defend the creation of an institute, with robustness, with a larger team, so that we can carry out an evaluation, monitoring, regulation, of private higher education in Brazil”, said the minister in an interview with Estadão published this Friday (12) highlighting that more than 80% of higher education enrollments are private.

According to him, the targets are mainly courses with high demand and that generate high profits – such as medicine – and distance learning courses, EADs whose authorization processes were suspended in 17 areas in November last year.

Santana states that for the medicine course, for example, a committee of doctors is needed to go to the location to analyze the physical structure and whether it is capable of receiving the course. Only with positive approval is the opening of the graduation course authorized.

And this, he says, “needs to be paid for”. “Nothing is fairer than charging institutions, which are private, and whose objective is to make a profit,” she said. Currently, there is a secretariat at the MEC responsible for this analysis.

“The distance learning course makes people’s lives easier, but you need to know what type of course I can offer EAD, which type I need to mix [com conteúdo presencial]”, said Camilo Santana about distance learning courses mainly in nursing, in which 40% of enrollments are for this modality and he questions its effectiveness.

In addition to creating a specific body to regulate private higher education courses, the minister also mentioned the elaboration of a regulatory framework for distance education, in which entities that offer these degrees are being heard to define which ones can be offered entirely in this format and which ones require a hybrid model.