EXTERNAL INSTITUTIONAL EVALUATION AND INSTITUTIONAL DIVERSITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN FEDERAL DISTRICT
Higher Education; Sinaes; Institutional diversity; External institutional evaluation.
This work is about the institutional evaluation held in the National Higher Education Evaluation System (Sinaes) and it aimed to analyse in which way the external institutional evaluation has considered the institutional diversity in Higher Education sphere, from regulatory processes of accreditation and re-accreditation of private and public entities selected to the survey. It was adopted the qualitative approach in an exploratory research. For data collection, document analysis and semi-structured interviews were used, the latter with deans and academic directors from 11 (eleven) Higher Education institutions and 4 (four) members of State bodies. The Dialectical materialism was chosen as the research method and it has enabled the comprehension of the reality from the analytical categories of totality, contradiction and mediation. It was observed that the external institutional evaluation has acted in a way to uniform the HEIs, adopting evaluative tools and practices which restrict the perception of institutional diversity, and, consequently, disregarding the institutional characteristics and identities. On the other hand, the regulation distinguishes the HEIs, loosening rules and granting benefits in accordance with the performance demonstrated in the evaluations. Regardless of the critics to the bureaucratic and regulatory aspect of the external institutional evaluation, it was noticed its contribution to the quality improvement and institutional development, specially when combined with the internal evaluation. The contradiction is noticeable when it’s considered that the Sinaes was created as a formative and emancipating evaluation, but it has been devolving into a tool of control and regulation