Even though he is retired, educator and professor José Dias Sobrinho still frequents the corridors of the Faculty of Education at Unicamp, where he works as a collaborator. He was dean of Postgraduate Studies from 1990 to 1994, when he conceived and coordinated the pioneering institutional evaluation experience at the University. Dias Sobrinho currently chairs the Special Higher Education Assessment Commission, established by the MEC to analyze and propose a new higher education assessment system. In the interview that follows, the educator criticizes the ranking recommended by Provão, stating that, the way it is formulated, the model prioritizes the logic of competitiveness, and not education as a public good, and talks about the changes planned for the evaluation system .
JU – The way it was conceived, what would be the main problem presented by the National Course Exam (Provão) today in your opinion?
Dias Sobrinho – An American author, George Madaus, highlights something that I understand as one of Provão’s main problems. The way it is presented, the training curriculum of a course escapes the hands of the teacher and the school and passes to external entities. Curriculum is understood as not only the list of subjects, but the entire set of educational activities (didactic and pedagogical activities) in its broadest sense. When an institution attaches excessive value to the results of its students in a test, it tends to transform the set of its educational practices into a type of “cram” that leads to good performance in the Exam. There are cases in which basic subjects are placed closer to the Provão. Teaching and studying for the exam represents an impoverishment of the individual's integral education.
JU – So the mechanism is not effective?
Dias Sobrinho – The test simply functions as an instrument that must be associated with multiple instruments and procedures that must constitute the assessment. It is important to know how education is in Brazil, but this is not used to create rankings. Even because an A on the Provão does not mean that the course is good, nor does an E indicate that it is necessarily very bad. It simply suggests a relative position. In some areas, there are A courses with a low average. However, they receive the best qualification for having obtained better results than others. However, student results do not necessarily represent the quality of the courses.
JU – What’s the problem with ranking?
Dias Sobrinho – The following is known as the “Harvardian” fallacy: Harvard University has had the best results largely because it receives the best students. It is an injustice to compare a large, complete and complex university, with adequate production conditions, which develops teaching, research, extension, which receives the best students and which in general has the best socioeconomic conditions, with a poorer, less consolidated institution, and which does not receive the best students. The second point is linked to student performance. The consolidated average does not evaluate the quality of the course. It cannot be said that this result represents the quality of the course. Even because the quality of the course is much more than the sum or average of the student's performance. In a higher education course, quality consists of what they learn, the quality of research, the level of teachers, the quality of libraries and an entire environment that goes far beyond what the student answered in a test. Another question would be that performance is different from learning. It can't be confused. Learning is not measured, which is something personal, and much less is learning assessed at a national level. Learning could only be measured in very concrete and specific conditions. Performance concerns a student's ability to answer a given question at a given time, but does not necessarily prove that that student actually learned what the exam is asking.
JU – Would the alternative then be to abolish Provão as a mechanism?
Dias Sobrinho – The Minister of Education himself, Cristovam Buarque, has signaled the change in the logic of Assessment. Within the conception of an isolated instrument to produce rankings, it will not continue. This does not mean that national evidence or tests cannot be used within a broader conception of assessment, where it becomes an instrument linked to many others within the logic of educational assessment and not simply ranking. It would be possible to maintain this instrument without this logic and the purpose it has today. The ranking is within the logic of competitiveness, and this is part of the market and not exactly education as a public good.
JU – What would be the most appropriate logic?
Dias Sobrinho – The logic would be above all that of a collective construction by the educational community articulated with the regulation and evaluation carried out by the State, in accordance with a higher education project. Regulation, in this case, would not be merely a punitive control or something to say: 'you can work, you can't; you are better than the other and so on'. But, yes, conceived within a logic of improving the process in which institutions do it to improve. There would certainly be disclosure of the results, society needs to know everything about the institutions, but the disclosure should be done in a way that does not produce hierarchies of institutions.
JU – What do you mean by the term regulation carried out by the State?
Dias Sobrinho – There are two arguments to put into question. One would be the concept of regulation, control, inspection. This concerns operating authorization and accreditation/re-accreditation. This aspect must exist, it is legal, bureaucratic and basically a function of the State. Its duty is to regulate not only to maintain the educational system in accordance with minimum parameters of acceptability, but also to induce quality practices. Another thing is called evaluation. Assessment is construction, improvement, knowing the problems to overcome them and do better. This is educational assessment. If it's not this, it's just control. Now, there is, of course, a connection between the two things: regulation and evaluation.
JU – Does this have to do with the phenomenon of opening courses in the private network in recent years?
Dias Sobrinho – The current instruments were created to favor the opening of courses, according to the idea that evaluation would be the counterpoint to liberalization. As long as the person is up to date with their tax obligations, they can open a course. There is no project, a program, a conception of higher education that defines what type of institutions need to be opened and where. There is wide freedom to open courses.
JU - Is this bad?
Dias Sobrinho – Expanding access to higher education is desirable. What is bad is the concept of higher education not being linked to a nation project. Without this project, without a public objective, courses are being opened that do not meet society's needs. What we need is to make regulation exist and be serious, but also educational. This will require monitoring, true and much broader assessments. More than a tasting and a visit. It has to be something broader and based on multiple factors and references.
JU – What would be the proposal amidst so many mismatches?
Dias Sobrinho – Higher education must be “pulled up” so that institutions are more complete and complex. That quality teaching, research and extension be encouraged. Not all of them can carry out all of these dimensions (teaching, research, extension, graduation, postgraduate studies, etc.), but it is important that State policies increase the possibilities of such institutions, to create a higher quality system. In other words, instead of charging the minimum for a test, other instruments must be created that induce more consistent education. The social function of education needs to be evaluated. The University exists to promote broad citizen training and develop science. It is necessary to recover the public value of each and every educational institution. The private sector must also understand that it has a mandate from society to provide education and must correspond to the social functions assigned to it. Every educational institution must have a public purpose. If it only has market purposes, it is defrauding society. The role of education is to transform/produce more representative values from a social point of view.
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