Democratização do acesso ou massificação do ensino? Uma avaliação política do financiamento estudantil no Ceará (2010 – 2018)

Abstract

This dissertation is about the federal student finance policy better known as FIES. The research focuses on the following question: what are the implications that the FIES has on higher education in private Institutions of Higher Education (HEI) in Ceará? Using the evaluation perspective of policy policy evaluation, it aims to evaluate the implications that the FIES promoted on higher education in the private HEIs of Ceará. As specific objectives, it aims to: 1) understand Brazilian education and, more specifically, higher education in the context of the Neoliberal State; 2) present the federal public policies of student financing for higher education; 3) to map the evolution of FIES transfers (2010-2018); 4) qualitatively analyze the two largest private HEIs benefited by the program. As methodological instruments, a bibliographical and documentary survey is used to meet the specific objective 1 and 2 in the sense of developing a historical, sociological, political and technical narrative about these themes; for objective 3, survey of the public information of the FIES transfers between the period from 2010 to 2018 in government platform, correlating them with quantitative simple linear correlation methods (FIES passages x General Index of Continuous Courses) with other variables; and under a qualitative approach to meeting objective 4 a documentary research based on institutional reports and newspaper news to briefly reconstruct the trajectory of the organization and its relationship with the FIES.The results point to a total of 50 organizations (75.38% of all Ceará) benefited by the program, of which 15 concentrate 90% of resources and students. Despite showing signs of promoting higher education in Ceará, both in the public and private spheres, during the study period, there was no significant improvement in the quality of education, nor the promotion of new universities in the state, given that the incentive generated by the policy - focus on teaching - accommodates organizations in colleges and university centers. In the qualitative analysis, it was observed that in some cases the policy represented 60% of the number of students, making some ventures in a kind of "semi-state enterprises", being the conglomerates dependent on this transfer for survival or to reheat their markets, besides consolidating a profitable system of risk-free capitalism, which runs out of time when the state is no longer in a position to maintain it, causing conglomerates to migrate to other sectors, such as basic education, or use other but reducing the burden of funding for the state, the taxpayer, and the indebted student, in an ongoing cycle of warming, exhaustion, and flight, draining resources that could once be found in federal public higher education.