Distance Education in Brazil: Quality and democratization of access go hand in hand

Asian Journal of Distance Education
http://www.AsianJDE.org
© 2018 The Asian Society of Open and Distance Education
ISSN 1347-9008 Asian J D E 2018 vol 13, no 1, pp 51 - 58
Distance Education in Brazil: Quality and democratization
of access go hand in hand
Luciano SATHLER
Technological Methodist University Izabela Hendrix
Brazilian Association for Distance Education
luciano.sathler.ead@gmail.com
Josiane Maria de Freitas TONELOTTO
University Anhembi Morumbi
jotonelotto@eadlaureate.com.br
ABSTRACT :
The objective of this article is present the scenario of higher education offered at as distance
learning mode in Brazil better known and to demonstrate that the students' academic
performance has no significant diferences comparing to face-to-face qualifications, which
demonstrates the effective incorporation of new technologies and methodologies. It was
analised the only large-scale parameter whose data are public and can be compared vis-a-vis,
by the years 2015 and 2016. It also aim to draw attention to distance education as a way that
can be expanded to establish multilateral research networks, exchanges and partnerships that
work on the complementarities and different challenges of The BRICS Network University,
established in 2015.
Keywords: The BRICS Network University, distance education, Brazil
1. INTRODUCTION :
Since its first Summit in 2009, BRICS
(Brazil, Russia, India, China and South
Africa) has significantly expanded its
activities in the areas of policy
coordination, economic-financial
cooperation and multisectoral cooperation.
Economic relations between countries are
best served by better understanding of
cultures and more confidence is established,
something that can only be achieved by
expanding contact possibilities,
disseminating knowledge and presenting
tangible results that benefit the populations
involved - not just the merchant or
government elites.
2.SOME BRICS COMPLEMENTARITIES
The areas of science, technology &
innovation (CTI) and energy are considered
priority by Brazil for the consolidation of
multisectoral cooperation. Coordination in
these areas can produce tangible results: to
improve the quality of life of the BRICS
population and for the innovation of the
national industrial and technological park.
The importance of cooperation in CTI is
due to the need to reduce the scientific and
technological gap between BRICS and
developed countries and has relevant
initiatives both in terms of the potential of
knowledge exchange and the resources
made available for research projects.
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ASIAN JOURNAL of DISTANCE EDUCATION
The BRICS Network University,
established in 2015, is an educational
project aimed at developing, preferentially,
bilateral/multilateral short-term joint
training, master's and PhD programmes
along with joint research projects in various
knowledge fields according to common
standarts and quality criteria, given
recognition of the learning outcomes by
participants as per national criteria. It
intends to offer in conformity with own
laws Masters and PhD programmes; short-
term training and modular courses;
development and implementation of joint
research projects, innovative activity within
the frames of educational programmes;
organization of the academic mobility if
students, the university faculty and staff of
the BRICS NU participants.
Distance education has been an important
factor for inclusion and expansion of access
to higher education in Brazil. And it can be
expanded to establish multilateral research
networks, exchanges and partnerships that
work on the complementarities and
different challenges of the BRICS countries.
3. THE BRAZILIAN HIGHER EDUCATION
LANDSCAPE
The Brazilian educational system and its
impacts on society still suffer from an
inheritance of mercantile colonialism, from
cruel and massive slavery, which has long
been taken as the basis for the socio-cultural
and economic matrix of the country.
The unjust inequality of income and
opportunities that Brazil has always marked
and continues to grow, caused by the
inability of the elites - for their interests,
their subordination to the culture and the
objectives of the rich countries, for their
incompetence - and the inability of our
people to understand and fight for your
rights.
The long history of slavery in Brazil,
coupled with the characteristics that marked
Portuguese colonization around the world,
made the opening of schools and
universities a late phenomenon, even
compared to other colonized nations in
Latin America.
In Higher Education, for example, The
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro claims
to have been founded in 1792, when the
first course of Higher Education was
created in Brazil, but it only effectively
received the title of "university" in 1920.
Brazil was a colony of Portugal, from the
year 1.500 to 1.822. From the outset the
economy was heavily reliant on slavery.
The many indigenous peoples who already
inhabited the land were the first to suffer
through the process of acculturation and
enslavement, to the point that millions of
women, men and children of various ethnic
groups were decimated.
Shortly after the arrival of the Portuguese,
the importation of blacks began to increase
the slave labor, mainly from Angola, also a
country dominated at the time by the
Portuguese.
In the year of its independence, out of
every three Brazilians, two were slaves,
blacks, freedmen, indigenous or mulatos.
Out of every ten people, only one could
read and write. At that historical moment,
no care was taken to improve the
distribution of income and opportunities in
an absolutely unequal society.
Brazil managed to separate itself from
Portugal without breaking the prevailing
social order. The small Brazilian elite
struggled to prevent the expansion of
participation in the self-determination of the
people resulting in ruptures that threatened
the status quo.
Brazil was the last country in the
world to abolish slavery in 1888,
perhaps because it was the nation that
most imported Africans, about 46% of
all those who were coercively brought
into the Americas. This astounding
volume of slaves was regarded as
private property.
This creates a dynamic in which slave
ownership was very important. Many
people had slaves. In the cities there
were lower-middle-class people who
had one or two slaves. Studies show
that slave ownership in Brazil was
much more widespread than in
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SATHLER & TONELOTTO
Jamaica or the South of the United States.
Almost everything depended on slave labor
and the arrival of Africans.
To get an idea of the extent to which
slavery marked cities, in 1849, the City of
Rio de Janeiro had 260,000 inhabitants, of
whom 110,000 were slaves. That is, 42% of
the population (Alencastro, 2000).
Since it was not enough to free the slaves
only, it was necessary to incorporate them
into society as full citizens. The regime of
slavery corrupted everything and prevented
the country from evolving. But nothing was
done after abolishment in terms of social
integration.
The impacts of this disinterest of elites on
the offer of Higher Education in Brazil can
be felt even today. The following data were
published by the Brazilian Institute of
Geography and Statistics (IBGE, 2018).
The population of Brazil reached 207
million in 2017. Among people between 18
and 24 years of age, the schooling rate was
31.7% in the same year. The adjusted net
attendance rate in higher education was
23.2%, reaching 26.8% for women.
About 25.1 million people aged 15-29
who did not achieve full tertiary education
were not studying or qualifying in 2017. Of
this group, 52.5% were men and 64.2%
were black or brown color.
The adjusted rate of school attendance net
of higher education was 23.2% in the
population aged 18 to 24 years. For women,
the rate was 26.8. For white people the rate
was 32.9%, and 16.7% for black or brown
people. The adjusted rate for black or brown
people remained almost half the rate for
white people.
In the analysis by sex and color or race,
22.9% of white people and 17.5% of
women, both 25 years of age or older, had
completed higher education in 2017.
Among men, 42.6% % were uneducated or
did not complete primary school and 13.7%
had completed higher education.
By 2017, 25.1 million people aged 15-29
had not attended school, pre-college
courses, mid-level or vocational training,
and had not completed an undergraduate
program. In this group it was characterized
by 52.5% of men and 64.2% of people of
black or brown color.
Regarding the level of education, 55.1%
had incomplete high school or higher
incomplete, 23% incomplete or
incomplete Secondary School and 21.9%
were uneducated or with complete
Elementary School.
The private higher education
institutions accounts for 75.3% of the
students of higher education, against
24.7% of the state entities. This means
that in 2016 there were 6,058,623
students enrolled in private colleges
and universities and another 1,990,078
in institutions run by the public
authority. When analyzing data from
2006 to 2016, the enrollment increase
was 66.8% in the private sector and
59% in the municipal, state and federal
higher education networks.
There are 2,407 institutions of higher
education in Brazil. Of these, 2,100
are from the private sector, while 298
are public. For each student enrolled in
the state network, there are 2.5
studying in private institutions, when
it comes to face-to-face courses.
In Brazil, in face-to-face courses, there
are 2.5 students enrolled in the private
higher education institutions for each
student enrolled in the public network.
The majority of students entering
higher education (61.5%) take
baccalaureate courses. The degree then
comes with 20% of the students, and
the Higher National Diplomas (HND)
are responsible for 17.8% of the
students. Women are the majority
among those enrolled in both
networks. The average age of the face-
to-face degree is 21 years, while
distance learning has been 28 years.
4. UNDERGRADUATE’S DISTANCE
LEARNING
According to the Census of Higher
Education (MEC, 2017), in 2016, 33% of
new students enrolled in higher education in
distance learning and 67% in face-to-face
courses.
53

The most frequent age of the student who
entered a undergraduate distance learning
program in 2016 was 28 years, while in the
classroom was 21 years.
Figure 1: Undergraduate Brazil – Enrolments face-to-face and distance learning 2003 – 2016.
Source: MEC, 2017.
A recent survey (ABMES, 2018) shows
that among people who choose to study in a
undergraduate distance learning program, a
higher age group predominates, being 38%
from 31 to 40 years of age and 29% from 40
years of age.
The majority of these students are of class
C (58%) and come from public school
(75%). It is also predominant the number
of people who work (83%) and who are
married (62%).
Table 1: Brazilian Family Income Monthly 2016
Class Family Income Monthly 2016
A US$ 5.122,89 or more
B US$ 2.561,44 to US$ 5.122,88
C US$ 1.027,58 to US$ 2.561,43
D US$ 512,29 to US$ 1.027,57
Note: Quotation US$ in 05/25/2018
5. THE NATIONAL STUDENT
PERFORMANCE EXAM – ENADE
There are recurrent discussions about
possible differences in the quality of higher
education when offered in person or at a
distance learning mode. Often driven by
prejudice and ignorance,
it is common to find statements that have
no scientific or statistical basis against
Distance Educacion. Starting with an
ideological position that regards
technology first and only as an instrument
of domination and social control.
54

SATHLER & TONELOTTO
On the other hand, there is always the
risk of technophilia, passive adoption and
reification (Lukács, 1989) enhanced by
technology, a transformation experienced
by productive activity, by social relations
and by human subjectivity itself, subjected
and increasingly identified with the
character inanimate, quantitative and
automatic of objects, by commodity
fetishism and alienation.
In Brazil, the Federal Government
regulates and conducts the objective
processes of quality evaluation of Higher
Education.
Established by law in 2004, the National
System for the Evaluation of Higher
Education (SINAES), has the mission of
evaluating undergraduate courses in order
to improve the quality of Higher Education
and the academic training of Brazilian
students (INEP, 2015).
The evaluations carried out under this
system assess the quality of Higher
Education Institutions, undergraduate
courses and student performance.
The evaluation of students' performance
in undergraduate courses, carried out
through the National Student Performance
Examination - Enade -, has the purpose of
evaluating students' performance in relation
to the programmatic contents, their skills
and competences. It also provides elements
for the construction of quality indicators of
the courses that serve as reference for the
subsequent processes of evaluation in loco.
In this way, graduation evaluation plays a
significant role in strengthening higher
education, allowing society, the
management bodies of this type of
education and the institutions themselves to
use it as an important diagnostic tool to
reference and define public policies relevant
to development institutional and social.
Figure 2: Qualifications evaluated in the cycles ENADE 2015 and 2016, offered
distance and face-to-face by private Brazilian institutions
Although institutional profile and
regional differences can produce specific
situations and require more or less extensive
readings on the situation
of higher education in Brazil, the quality
of undergraduate courses, regardless of
where they are offered, should be pursued
by all, without distinction.
55

After all, the National Curricular
Guidelines that guide the training of
students in different undergraduate courses
define the same quality expectations for the
professional profile, skills and abilities
expected of graduates of higher education.
Undergraduate’s face-to-face and
distance learning students participate in
the same test of Enade, on the same day,
at the same time and in the same
conditions, according to the evaluation
cycle of each course. This allows us to
establish some performance comparisons,
as we will show below.
6. DATA ANALYSIS ENADE 2015
The performances obtained in the
ENADE’s 2015 and 2016 were analyzed
by 14 courses belonging to 69 private
higher education institutions in Brazil,
which had at least one course offered both
in face and distance. These 14 courses
were recorded 211 times.
Table 2: Qualifications evaluated in the cycles ENADE 2015 and 2016, comparison
distance and face-to-face offered by private Brazilian institutions
Tertiary Education Qualifications
Distance
Education
Face-to-Face
Bachelor - Business Administration 2,33 2,45
Bachelor - Accounting 2,52 2,68
Bachelor - Sports Science 2,28 2,42
Bachelor - Social Service 2,21 2,16
Higher National Diplomas - Agribusiness 2,48 1,57
Higher National Diplomas - International Trade 4,16 2,68
Higher National Diplomas - Management of Environment 2,71 1,74
Higher National Diplomas - Commerce 3,38 2,43
Higher National Diplomas - Human Resources 2,85 2,7
Higher National Diplomas - Finance 3,14 2,91
Higher National Diplomas - Management of Hospitals 2,63 1,1
Higher National Diplomas - Logistics 2,98 2,8
Higher National Diplomas - Marketing 2,68 2,22
Higher National Diplomas - Management 2,94 2,5
Bachelor - Theology 2,48 3,05
As shown in graphic 2 and table 2, we
can observe small differences in results,
more positive for face-to-face
qualifications, in bachelor's degrees like
business administration, accounting, and
sports science, the last one focused mainly
in teacher’s formation.
The face-to-face’s baccalaureate in
theology demonstrates a greater and
positive difference, perhaps because the
profile of the students is different from the
other courses: even older, who find in the
studies a more significant personal
satisfaction because they usually apply the
knowledge acquired immediately in their
daily lives in the religious organizations that
act.
56

SATHLER & TONELOTTO
On the other hand, for work-related
higher education qualifications – looking
more like Higher National Diplomas in UK
- with a shorter duration focused on the
practical application of management or
techniques for the professional arena,
distance education students have had more
positive results, sometimes with great
differences.
7. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS
FOR NEW RESEARCHES
The Economically Active Population
(EAP) of the BRICS represents an
enormous productive potential, which
today corresponds to more than 1.5 billion
active workers, with a relatively low
average age.
The design and implementation of public
policies for education, employment and
income that actually improve the labor
market situation, especially for young
people, women and blacks, would
represent an important economic boost for
each of the BRICS countries. The
importance of greater and more intense
coordination between the Ministries of
Education of the five countries, which
makes possible progress in the field of
distance education and new possibilities
for cooperation, is therefore important.
To realize its full potential at the required
speed and intensity, The BRICS Network
University needs to prioritize distance
education and the possibilities brought by
new technologies to bring people,
institutions, cultures together and generate
knowledge through mutual learning.
Observed the performance comparison
presented in this article, it is clear that a
standardized test applied to students should
not be considered as the main way of
measuring the quality of Higher Education
in a country.
However, as the only large-scale
parameter whose data are public and can
be compared vis-a-vis, it can be seen that
there are no significant differences in
performance between students of
undergraduate’s face-to-face and distance
learning courses.
Brazilian society has experienced a
decline in the number and proportion of
students with high performance in
ENADE, in addition to the low
performance in international assessments
in K-12. The number of adult and
adolescent functional illiterates is large.
According to the World Bank (2018), in
it’s World Development Report 2018,
there is a crisis of learning, in addition
perceived in many countries.
Distance Education addresses efforts to
reduce inequalities and have a potential to
sustain leap-frogs with the incorporation
of new technologies and methodologies
(Sharma, 1999). The distance education or
face-to-face classroom should contemplate
practices that are sufficiently innovative,
that go beyond to a emancipatory and
critical direction.
According to Franco (2016), the
pedagogical practices include from the
planning and systematization of the
dynamics of the learning processes to the
walk in the middle of processes that occur
in addition to the learning, in order to
guarantee the teaching of contents and
activities that are considered fundamental
for that stage of formation of the student,
and, through this process, create in the
students mechanisms of mobilization of
their previous knowledge built in other
educational spaces.
In digital convergence times people
learn differently. The possibilities opened
by technology lead us to rethink
methodologies of teaching, research and
even the way in which educational
institutions organize themselves.
It will disseminate new concepts and
practices that impact or can influence
educational institutions and their
professionals through the mediation of
technology, especially teachers and
educational managers. It is a paradigmatic
change that calls for discussion, reflection,
investigation and analysis well grounded,
not dazzled or apocalyptic.
57

Consider that the proposal of any
educational mode, distance Education or
face-to-face, the challenge will always be
the same in Brazil: the democratization of
knowledge as key and fundamental for the
strengthening of democracy, the reduction
of inequalities and the defense of human
dignity.
REFERENCES
ABMES. Um ano do decreto EAD: O
impacto da educação a distância na
expansão do ensino superior
brasileiro. Brasília: Associação
Brasileira de Mantenedoras de
Ensino Superior, 2018.
Alencastro, L. F. (2000). O trato dos
viventes: Formação do Brasil no
Atlântico Sul - Séculos XVI e XVII.
São Paulo, SP: Companhia das
Letras.
Franco, M. A. R. S. (2016). Prática
pedagógica e docência: um olhar a
partir da epistemologia do
conceito. In Revista Brasileira de
Estudos Pedagógicos, 247, p. 534-
55.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s2176-
6681/288236353
IBGE. (2018). Pesquisa Nacional por
Amostra de Domicílios Contínua
2017. Rio de Janeiro, RJ: IBGE,
2018. Available at <
https://bit.ly/2INZn7Y> acess in
25/05/2018.
INEP. (2015). Sistema Nacional de
Avaliação da Educação Superior –
SINAES. (vol. 1). Brasília, DF:
Instituto Nacional de Estudos e
Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio
Teixeira.
Lukács, G. (2003). História e consciência
de classe: Estudos de dialética
marxista. (R. Nascimento, Trans.)
São Paulo, SP: Martins Fontes.
(Original work published 1923).
MEC. (2017). Censo da Educação
Superior 2016. Brasília, DF:
Ministério da Educação.
Sharma, R.C. (1999). Networked
Distance Education in India, Indian
Journal of Open Learning, 8 (2),
147-156.
World Bank. (2018). The World
Development Report 2018:
Learning to realize education’s
promise. Washington, DC: World
Bank.
Luciano SATHLER, PhD, is the rector of the Technological Methodist University Izabela
Hendrix, in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, and diretor of the Brazilian Association for
Distance Education, São Paulo, Brazil. CV: http://lattes.cnpq.br/6215535222588743
E-mail: luciano.sathler.ead@gmail.com
Josiane Maria de Freitas TONELOTTO, PhD, is the rector for distance education at University
Anhembi Morumbi, São Paulo, Brazil. CV: http://lattes.cnpq.br/7980652799357054
E-mail: jotonelotto@eadlaureate.com.br
For copyright / reproducing permission details, email : Editor@AsianJDE.org
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Distance Education in Brazil: Quality and democratization of access go hand in hand

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