Sisu: Universities cancel waiting list due to MEC error – 02/22/2024 – Education

Universities and federal institutes postponed the publication or corrected the publication of those approved on the Sisu (Unified Selection System) waiting list following guidance from the MEC (Ministry of Education). Contacted by phone and email several times since Wednesday night (21), the department did not provide an explanation about the incidents.

The report raised problems in 20 institutions across the country in the calls for this “recap” stage, which selects those who were not approved in the first call, in January — when another failure had already led to the publication of incorrect results.

These are the cases of UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais), Ufba (Federal University of Bahia), UFG (Federal University of Goiás), UFF (Federal Fluminense University), UFRN (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte) and UFSM (University Federal District of Santa Maria), for example.

The list of those called up began to be released last Friday (16). The university in Bahia had already announced its approved candidates when Camilo Santana’s department sent the names of those classified to the institutions. This Wednesday, however, the list was deleted.

“We inform the candidates of the Sisu 2024 selection process, registered on the waiting list, under the responsibility of Sisu, that for technical reasons, it will be replaced”, stated the institution on its website this Wednesday. “As soon as the new data is received and updated, we will release it again.”

The same happened with UFG. The Goiás institution had released its listing on Monday (19) and had to delete it after two days to create a new one. The university declared that the previous publication “loses its validity for all purposes, even if the confirmation of the place was carried out by the successful candidate”.

At UFSM, the list had been presented on Tuesday (20) and was taken down for further publication. On its website, the university in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul advises candidates to check their names again.

On the UFMG website, there is a note saying that, “in compliance with guidance from the MEC, the publication of the results of the Sisu 2024 waiting list has been postponed”.

At UFF, the call was scheduled for this Wednesday. The university released a statement stating that there had been data processing errors at the ministry that made it impossible to catalog those approved through the waiting list. The situation was the same at UFRN, which regretted what happened and highlighted that it was awaiting instructions from the MEC.

Other units had problems, such as the federal institutes of Amazonas, Pernambuco and Sul de Minas. All report still waiting for withdrawals.

It is not clear whether the reprocessing of the lists changed the classification of candidates, as had occurred when the first call was announced. At the time, a provisional list was released incorrectly, showing as approved students who had not qualified for the places they applied for.

On social media, students express their concern about the new problem in the Lula (PT) government’s selection system.

“What is happening for universities that did not publish the waiting list, postponed together?”, published one on X, formerly Twitter.

“It’s okay that the name is a waiting list, but do we really have to wait that long?”, wrote another.

Selection and Enem had failures

Sisu offers places at federal universities based on the Enem test. In total this year, more than 2 million students competed for 264 thousand places in 6,827 undergraduate courses at the institutions.

On the 30th, the MEC had planned to publish the list of those selected in the first call, but claimed that due to “technical problems in the system” it had to postpone the consultation and had to postpone the publication. It was only the following day that the results were published.

The failure frustrated students. Some of them managed to access the page and saw that they were approved at the universities they applied to. When the official results came out, these students discovered that they did not get the place they had selected.

The MEC confirmed that there was an improper disclosure of provisional results, which had not yet been approved. According to the folder, the data was available for 25 minutes. The incident is being investigated.

In addition to students frustrated with the undue disclosure of results in January, around 50 thousand registered for the Enem test, whose score is used to access Sisu, were allocated to locations far from their homes. The notice guaranteed that participants would take last November’s exam no more than 30 km away from their homes. Students reported distances of more than 40 km.

When admitting the problem, the ministry said that the definition of the test locations was made by Cebraspe (Brazilian Center for Research in Assessment and Selection and Promotion of Events), winner of the tender for the application of Enem 2023.

As there were reports of students considering giving up taking the exam, the MEC authorized these candidates to take the test on another date. But there were cases of students who preferred to take the exam on the original date and had to travel 33 kilometers.