Enade and health education inequalities: public vs. private in Santa Catarina
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1590/SciELOPreprints.18453Keywords:
ENADE, Distance Education, Health Education, Higher Education Evaluation, Educational InequalitiesAbstract
This study analyzes the performance of health courses in the National Student Performance Examination (ENADE), comparing a federal public university and private institutions in Santa Catarina, Brazil, with emphasis on the disparity between face-to-face and distance education (EAD) modalities. The research is justified by the vertiginous growth of distance education in Brazilian higher education, which reached 50.7% of all undergraduate enrollments in 2024, with 95.9% concentrated in the private sector, particularly in health courses such as Nutrition, Pharmacy, and Biomedicine. Methodologically, the study adopts a quantitative-comparative approach based on the analysis of ENADE microdata from the 2022 and 2023 editions, examining the ENADE Concept and success rates in General Education questions. The results reveal a profound asymmetry: while the federal public university obtained concepts between 4 and 5 in all courses analyzed, the private institution remained mostly at concepts 2 and 3. More strikingly, no distance education course in Nursing, Pharmacy, or Nutrition reached concept 5, and only a small minority achieved concept 4, in contrast to hundreds of face-to-face courses in excellence strata. The study concludes that the massification of distance education, without adequate practical and pedagogical infrastructure, may compromise the quality of professional training in health, configuring a risk to society. It is imperative that educational managers and public authorities re-evaluate the criteria for authorization, supervision, and evaluation of distance education courses in health, under penalty of transforming the expansion of access into a downgrading of educational excellence.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Carlos Frederico Tourinho dos Santos, Maria Paula Pedroso, João Artur de Souza

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Funding data
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Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico
Grant numbers 02/2025/PROPESQ -
Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa e Inovação do Estado de Santa Catarina
Grant numbers 02/2025/PROPESQ ;10.13039/501100005GG7 (735/2024)
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Data statement
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The research data is contained in the manuscript


