O SINAES no período 2004-2024: reflexos na UEG na percepção de coordenadores de curso, professores e estudantes

Abstract

This study is part of the Research Line State, Policies, and History of Education and seeks to contribute to the analysis of Brazil’s higher education assessment policy. The research aimed to analyze the National System for the Evaluation of Higher Education (Sinaes), focusing on the period from 2004 to 2024 and on its possible effects on course coordination, teaching, and student training at the Universidade Estadual de Goiás (UEG). To this end, an exploratory and descriptive case study was conducted, grounded in historical-dialectical materialism and developed through a qualitative approach. Theoretical-methodological categories such as totality, mediation, contradiction, hegemony, and reproduction were adopted, with emphasis on the first three, according to Marx (1985, 2013). The research was based on bibliographical, documentary, and empirical investigations, which made it possible to understand the object of study in its totality. The empirical investigation focused on the Câmpus Central – Headquarters: Anápolis – Ciências Exatas e Tecnológicas Henrique Santillo and the Unidade Universitária de Ciências Socioeconômicas e Humanas – Nelson de Abreu Júnior, characterizing a typical case study. The theoretical framework is grounded in historical-dialectical materialism and is articulated with classical and contemporary authors such as Marx, Engels, Kosik, Dias Sobrinho, Frigotto, Afonso, Sguissardi, Verhine, Harvey, Rothen and Barreyro, Ristoff, Dourado and Oliveira, Amaral, among others, whose critical contributions address neoliberalism, the evaluative state, and assessment policies. This framework strengthens the analysis of the tensions between the original formative proposal of SINAES and its metamorphosis into a regulatory and control instrument. The empirical research was conducted at UEG from November 2023 to June 2024. The sample included 21.9% (533) of students, 24.2% (70) of faculty members, and 64.7% (11) of course coordinators. Data were analyzed using content analysis with the support of Atlas.ti software. The results reveal that Sinaes is perceived as a system marked by weaknesses in institutional communication, low student engagement, and limited use of results by pedagogical bodies. Coordinators and professors recognize the system’s formative potential but point to contradictions and limitations in its practical effectiveness. Most students demonstrate limited understanding of the objectives and implications of the evaluation process, having the Enade as their main reference—perceived as a practice detached from academic life and scarcely linked to the effective promotion of formative quality. It is concluded that the effects of Sinaes on course coordination, teaching, and students at UEG are characterized by ambiguity and contradiction. On the one hand, the system exerts direct influence on pedagogical practices, reinforcing the logic of accountability, the focus on measurable results, and the curricular adjustments to external demands, especially those defined by performance indicators such as Enade, CPC, and IGC. On the other hand, forms of resistance and reinvention emerge, in which coordinators and professors demonstrate critical awareness, reinterpret the evaluative instruments, and seek to articulate them with the formative and emancipatory purposes of higher education. These dynamic reveals that, although the current evaluative model is imbued with managerial rationality, course coordination and teaching remain spaces of contestation, meaning-making, and intellectual autonomy in the face of the constraints imposed by evaluation policy.