NATIONAL UNIVERSITY RATING AND ASSESSMENT SYSTEMS IN THE BRICS COUNTRIES: Current status, approaches and key challenges

There are about 120 federal universities as well as 2,264 private institutions, in Federative Republic of Brazil, which are subject to federal regulatory authorities.

Since 2004, Federative Republic of Brazil has a unified national rating system for higher education institutions (HEI), following the 1988 Federal Constitution mandate for the State to provide quality assurance at the higher educational level. The country has considerableexperience in rating HEI, , and presently such ratings are used as an official tool to assess higher education system performance at the national level.

In 2004, at the federal level, in accordance with Law No. 10,861, the Anisio Teixeira National Research Institute of Education (Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira, INEP), associated with the Brazilian Ministry of Education, developed the National University Performance Assessment System (SINAES), and it was implemented as mandatory for all federal and private higher education institutions in the country. In addition, there are also 138 state HEIs and 57 municipal HEIs which are subordinate to their own jurisdictions

SINAES assesses higher education institutions, education programs, and student academic performance and achievements. The system indicators characterize quality of education, research activities, social responsibility, student perception concerning the program design, infrastructure, as well as educational level and time commitment of faculty staff of higher education institutions. SINAES provides a comprehensive assessment of educational courses quality and the country’s tertiary level in general, which includes three main elements:

• Institutional assessment, including HEI´s internal and external assessment related to the following aspects: a formulated mission, a development plan, education process policies, research, expansion and development of activities, social responsibility, its interaction with society, infrastructural level of development.
• Undergraduate programe assessment, including availability and educational level of faculty staff, material capacities and resources, didactic and pedagogical training courses, and a number of other indicators.
• Student performance assessment, based on results of the National Student Performance Examination (ENADE), mandatory for all HEI graduates of programs of a minimum size of studens and courses in the scope of Sinaes, organized in a three-year cycle.

The data source is a national database (Censo da Educação Superior) that contains information about all students and all faculty staff of the country higher education system. The database also provides information about funding, availability of libraries and other resources. All of it is also included in the general assessment system.

Other institutes affiliated with the Brazilian Ministry of Education for collecting data and assessing higher education quality at the national level are CNPq(Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico O, Science and Education Research Counsel) and CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Coordination for Development of Higher Education Personnel) a coordination and accreditation body accrediting higher education faculty staff, as well as masters and postgraduate programs.

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