Assessing the Performance and Costs of Graduation of the Federal Institutions of Higher Education

Abstract

Federal higher education institutions (IFES) have been labeled as inefficient on undergraduate education activities. The focus of the criticisms frequently made by the media and by international agencies, such as the newspaper O Globo and the World Bank, is the high annual cost per student, high dropout rates,and a good part of their students belong to the upper classes. IFES role have been recognized regarding all the other activities of postgraduation, research and extension because they account, together with the state universities, for 83.8% of the total of postgraduate students of all IFES and they are responsible for a large amount of the countrys scientific literature. IFES are also recognized for the importance of their extension activities, such as providing health care to the population at their teaching hospitals, offering continuing education training to primary education teachers and by the importance and excellence of their technical education and schools. In the present study we show that the e criticisms regarding IFES undergraduate education of do not proceed. The annual expenditure per student is equivalent to the private institutions of higher education, IFES graduation rate is 24% superior compared to others and the majority of their graduates have a family income of less than 4,5 minimum wages, and only 12% belong to families with incomes above 10 minimum wages. In addition, based on the results of their students in Enade exams from 2015 to 2017, we show that courses quality average is higher than others private institutions of higher education.