Pandemic and EaD empty courses at public universities

Professor of Finance at UFPE (Federal University of Pernambuco) Pierre Lucena couldn’t remember ever having seen so few students in the corridors of the CCSA (Center for Applied Social Sciences), which used to be full during the night shift. Amazed, he made a video and published the images on your Twitter account.

“I was already noticing a certain emptiness at UFPE, but yesterday I was really very worried”, he commented, on June 13th. The images had 1.6 million views. A few days earlier, Lucena had drawn attention to the drop in the number of graduates. “This week we had a graduation ceremony for UFPE’s undergraduate courses. In the economics course, 120 students entered and only 6 left. In administration we had less than half graduating, of the 100 who entered, ”he wrote.

The messages generated similar reports from other professors. “At the UEPB Humanities Center, the same phenomenon occurs”, wrote Agassiz de Almeida Filho, professor of Law at the State University of Paraíba. Professor of Mathematics at UFSC (Federal University of Santa Catarina), Vinicius Albani endorsed: “In the first post-pandemic entrance exam at UFSC, the number of enrollments was 40% lower than in 2019. I watched there too.” Fábio Periandro, from the Federal University of Bahia, made a similar comment: “We are experiencing the same phenomenon at UFBA”. José Alves, professor of Geography at the Federal University of Acre added to the list: “We also feel the same in the UFAC Degree courses.”

Lucena believes that some of the students preferred the EaD (Distance Learning) modality at a private university; others simply drop out of higher education. The main reasons: the excessive demand for time and the increasingly uncertain benefit of undergraduate courses.

The most recent numbers indicate that, in fact, a combination of factors may be emptying Brazilian public universities.

Data show profile change

The Higher Education Map, which gathers statistics on Brazilian universities, confirms Professor Pierre Lucena. The 2023 edition of the survey was released last Tuesday (20) by SEMESP (Union of Higher Education Maintainers), which represents private colleges and universities. The publication shows that the dropout rate in the public higher education network (the ratio between dropouts and enrollment), which had remained stable at around 18.5% since 2010, jumped to 21.7% in 2020 and 20.7% in 2021. Among the freshmen in 2017, 40.3% had already dropped out of the course in 2021.

In addition, when considering only face-to-face courses, the number of graduates has dropped year after year since 2018.

“The numbers show, once again (…), a growth in the Distance Learning modality and a decline in face-to-face enrollments, something worrying because distance learning continues without winning over a younger audience, more used to face-to-face courses or to a new hybrid modality that mixes face-to-face with remote classes”, says the report, on the causes of evasion.

The data also show a drop in graduate studies: between 2021, the reduction in master’s enrollments in the public network was 5.8%. Doctoral enrollments dropped by 14.1% over the same period.

Rule change and pandemic

Part of the explanations for students’ lack of interest and the increase in evasion are known: disjointed timetables; excessive commuting time, absence of teachers and unproductive classes. But a combination of two other factors seems to have increased their consequences.

The first was the expansion of EaD (Distance Learning) courses. Until 2017, colleges could only offer distance courses if they also had the corresponding option in face-to-face mode. In addition, institutions were required to offer “DE centers” where distance course students had access to a computer lab. With the rule change, both requirements dropped. This has driven the increase in distance learning courses, which are more profitable because they require less infrastructure spending.

The second factor was Covid-19. With the pandemic, most higher education institutions had to resort to some form of distance learning. As a result, a significant number of students (and professors) realized that it was possible to learn effectively without having to travel to the university campus.

The most recent edition of the Higher Education Census, released in November last year, shows that, from 2017 to 2021, the number of distance learning vacancies in higher education quadrupled (from 4.7 to 16.7 million). Between 2020 and 2021 alone, growth was 23.8%. At the same time, the number of on-site vacancies has decreased: the most recent number shows 5.9 million students in this modality. The number is the lowest recorded since 2015.

In 2020, for the first time, the number of entrants (freshmen) in distance undergraduate courses surpassed that of students in the face-to-face modality. From 2019 to 2021, the number of enrollments in face-to-face education fell by 19%.

Another way to see the numbers is this: in 2017, there were over 1.3 million on-site vacancies more than at a distance. In 2021, there were 10.7 million more distance jobs than face-to-face jobs.

Anamaria Camargo, Master in Education from the University of Hull and executive director of Instituto Livre para Escolhar, says that the benefits of face-to-face teaching at public universities are not always evident. “I think it’s a matter of incentives and cost-effectiveness. Greater access to university has not been accompanied by more transformative education or a greater impact on the country’s productivity,” she says.

downward trend

The effect of the pandemic and expansion on EaD is visible. The INEP (National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira) database shows that federal universities graduated 14% fewer students in 2021 than in 2019. The number of entrants (new students) also decreased in the period: the reduction was of 11.5%.

In these two years, there was a drop of 17.5% in the number of new students in Physics courses at federal universities. Courses such as Geography (18.9% decrease) and Archivology (21.2% decrease) also registered significant losses. And, although Law maintained the historical average of admissions, Medicine lost about 8.8% of the number of freshmen between 2019 and 2011.

In some universities, the situation is especially alarming. In these two years, the UFG (Federal University of Goiás) had a drop of 37.8% in the number of new entrants. UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) lost 11.1%. At UFSM (Federal University of Santa Maria), the number of freshmen fell by 19% between 2019 and 2021. The institution now has the lowest number of freshmen since 2010, when the Census of Higher Education began to count the data. The Education course, for example, had 1,606 new students in 2019 and only 953 in 2021.

The drop in the number of new students, accompanied by high dropout rates, motivated the university to change its admission rules. In April of this year, UFSM decided to reduce the number of places allocated to the SiSU (Unified Selection System), which selects those approved based on the Enem score. Far from home and often without the financial support of the family, many students from other parts of the country ended up dropping out of the course. The educational institution also resumed the mid-year entrance exam, which had been abolished.

For Anamaria Camargo, public institutions need to adapt to changes in demand. “There are areas highly valued by the job market, particularly Information Technology, in which the university has failed to provide courses based on updated curricula. In this context, technical-level courses that are more agile and more responsive to market demands have attracted students, who end up dropping out or even seeking university, ”she says.