Política pública de regulação: processo de habilitação institucional de uma ifes para oferta de educação a distância.

Abstract

This study has as a goal to analyze the institutional license process (accreditation and re-accreditation) of a Federal Institution of Higher Education in Ceará, Brazil, to offer the distance education modality, considering the quality parameters defined by the Ministry of Education. Its theoretical arguments are based on concepts as public policies, regulatory policies for distance education and parameters of quality. Within a qualitative approach, the documentary research and the content analysis technique (BARDIN, 2010) were used to construct the data. After being analyzed, the data show the relationship between the normative incipience and the flexibility of the existing institutional accreditation model for distance education in 1998, with emphasis on administrative and technical-operational aspects. So, the re-accreditation process for distance education, at that institution in 2015, is based mainly on its plan of institutional development (PDI), being considered its main parameter of quality, and highlighted as key element for its institutional management and administrative apex. In addition, the dynamics between the various types of authorization acts, connected with the modalities of evaluation (institutional internal and external, courses and students), plus the simultaneity of cycles of the national system of evaluation of higher education (SINAES), determining an administrative systematics, both bureaucratic and business, provokes, in a certain way, an exhausting in the evaluation-regulation policies. Thus, it is possible to conclude that policies of evaluation and regulation have been reduced to a simple instrument of control and accountability of that Federal Institution of Higher Education.