Rapid and disorganized expansion of distance-learning undergraduate courses in Brazil exposes the potential and weaknesses of the model
Alexandre Affonso
Brazil’s Ministry of Education (MEC) is expected to announce new rules this month governing higher education courses offered via distance learning (DL), taught predominantly in a virtual environment. Classes—recorded or live—are given by specialist teachers and students via online platforms and supported by online tutors, with only certain activities requiring in-person attendance, such as exams and internships. According to the minister of education, Camilo Santana, the government will publish a decree defining which courses can continue to be taught remotely, which ones will need to be 100% in-person, and which can be hybrid, using a combination of both models. “I was amazed when I found out that 40% of nursing courses are being taught via distance learning. How can a nurse be trained remotely?” asked the minister in an interview with Empresa Brasileira de Comunicação on January 14. There are now very few degrees that cannot be offered via distance learning in Brazil, some of which include law, psychology, medicine, and dentistry.
The terms of the new regulations have been discussed since mid-2024, when the MEC halted the opening of new DL courses and support hubs for face-to-face activities and froze the number of spaces available on existing courses. The restriction is in effect until March 10. There is concern about the rapidly growing number of enrollments amid evidence that many courses may not be following criteria strict enough to ensure the quality of the education provided. According to the Higher Education Census, published by the National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (INEP) in October 2024, for every student enrolled in a traditional face-to-face undergraduate course in Brazil in 2023, there was another who opted for distance learning: in a near tie, there were five million in-person enrollments and 4.9 million enrollments on distance-learning courses. In 2019, the split was 72% face-to-face and 28% remote.
The change was driven by the private education sector, which increased its distance-learning undergraduate enrollments from one million in 2013 to 4.7 million in 2023. There are signs that some of these institutions are not offering a particularly high-quality remote education. Some of them charge very low monthly fees (the average in 2024 was R$210, according to the consultancy Hoper) and primarily offer classes via recorded videos, with little interaction between students and teachers. There have been reports of online tutors responsible for more than one thousand students at the same time. According to data from the National Student Performance Exam (ENADE), which evaluates higher education courses in the country, only 18% of distance-learning courses achieved the highest grades (4 and 5) in 2022. For face-to-face courses, the proportion was 27%.
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The increase was boosted by a change in regulations in 2017 that gave higher education institutions the right to create a certain number of in-person hubs for distance-learning courses without the need for prior approval by the MEC and to exclusively offer distance-learning degrees. As a result, the number of courses and centers more than tripled between 2018 and 2023. The pandemic, which saw remote teaching widely implemented on an emergency basis, is considered largely responsible for a major rise in interest in the flexibility of distance education among students. “Just as what happened in the workplace, many students began to see the advantages of studying remotely,” says mathematician and computer scientist Klaus Schlünzen Junior of São Paulo State University (UNESP), Presidente Prudente campus. “This was reflected in an increased demand for distance learning and reduced interest in face-to-face courses—something especially evident in undergraduate courses.” João Mattar, president of the Brazilian Association for Distance Education (ABED), highlights that students who graduate from distance-learning courses develop skills that are not always provided by face-to-face teaching. “They are generally more independent and better at using technology,” he says.
A change in public policy may also have boosted the teaching model. By investing in distance learning, private higher education institutions were able to recover some of the students and income they lost after the federal government reduced the size of its educational credit program, the Higher Education Student Fund (FIES). “FIES was very important for educational oligopolies. For some groups, up to 60% of their revenue came from the program. But in 2015, the government adopted fiscal austerity policies that led to funding cuts,” says Marcelo Scudeler, an education researcher who analyzed the relationship between FIES and distance learning in his doctoral thesis, defended at the Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas in 2022. He published his findings in the journal Revista da Avaliação da Educação Superior in 2023. “The program peaked in 2014, when more than 700,000 new agreements were signed. Now, roughly 40,000 new agreements are signed per year,” says Scudeler, who is a professor at the University of Vale do Sapucaí in Pouso Alegre, Minas Gerais.
As part of his research, Scudeler followed the social media profiles of education conglomerates, observing that some of them adopted business models similar to franchises in efforts to expand distance-learning opportunities. One of the cases he detailed in his thesis was the Multivix group, based in Espírito Santo, which published promotional material inviting people across Brazil to open in-person support hubs. Partners were asked to establish centers with capacity for up to 100 students and certain other requirements, including space for a reception, a classroom with at least 20 seats, a study room, cubicles with at least three computers, and bathrooms. In exchange, they would receive between 25% and 40% of the monthly fees paid by students they managed to recruit—the higher percentages were given to those who recruited the most students and to partners outside Espírito Santo. The Multivix group did not respond to PesquisaFAPESP’s request for an interview.
Alexandre Affonso / Revista Pesquisa FAPESP
Researchers who study distance learning stress that is important to distinguish the good from the bad, highlighting examples of quality distance education in Brazil and elsewhere in the world. “We have to recognize the work done by many public higher education institutions to bring high-quality education to every corner of the country,” says Ana Lara Casagrande, a professor at the Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT), which was the first public institution in Brazil to create a distance-learning degree in basic education in 1994.
Today, UFMT offers eight undergraduate courses via distance learning. “They all have ENADE scores close to the maximum of 5. For example, we have a distance-learning degree in educational technology that is a pioneer in Brazil and received a score of 5,” says Casagrande. The researcher says that some graduates of these distance-learning courses are now taking a master’s degree in person at the university. “Quality distance learning has well-defined characteristics, such as highly qualified teachers and tutors at in-person hubs and the possibility of continuous study, in addition to systems for recording and broadcasting classes that can alternate between synchronous moments, in which the student watches live, and asynchronous moments, when recorded classes are used,” she explains.
Another advantage of distance learning is that the tools used in virtual learning environments often support inclusivity, improving access for people with disabilities. An article published in the journal Acta Scientiarum: Education reviewed literature published between 2000 and 2015 on how distance education helped students with visual impairments. One of the conclusions was that in virtual environments, visually impaired students are able to follow classes without help from classmates and teachers thanks to resources related to the classes and teaching materials, such as audio description and PDF text reading software. “There are a number of assistive programs and technologies aimed at students who are blind or have other disabilities. As a result, fellow students sometimes do not even notice that there is a person with a visual impairment in the virtual learning environment,” says Maria Luisa Furlan Costa, head of the Distance Education and Educational Technologies Research Group at the State University of Maringá (UEM) in Paraná, who wrote the 2018 article together with Taissa Burci, a researcher from the State University of Paraná in Apucarana. “The issue is ensuring that the teaching material meets the needs of the students. A video with subtitles can be used by people with a hearing impairment or by a mother who is watching while breastfeeding and does not want to make a lot of noise,” she points out.
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The main objective of distance learning is to democratize access to education for people who live in places where there are no higher education institutions available. Ten percent of students enrolling in Brazil are in 2,281 municipalities where distance learning is the only way to get a degree, according to 2023 data from INEP. During her PhD, supervised by Costa, Taissa Burci analyzed the potential of distance learning for Indigenous students by looking at the case of UEM itself, which took a pioneering approach to distance learning in 2017, when it began offering the Entrance Exam for Indigenous Peoples of Paraná. “Distance learning allows Indigenous students to complete a large part of their education without leaving their community and family environment, which contributes to their well-being and academic success, although internet access is often a problem,” says Burci.
Last century, distance learning in Brazil was associated with less structured initiatives, such as correspondence courses and adult education via radio and television. According to Daniel Mill, a professor at the Department of Education of the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) and head of the Horizonte Group (Studies and Research on Innovation in Education, Technologies, and Languages), the growth of the internet has expanded the reach of distance learning and has thus made it an important research topic. “Until the 1990s, interest in the methodology was more technical in nature, involving testing environments that simulated online institutions or creating tools for remote exams,” he says. “With the establishment of distance learning as an educational model through Brazil’s 1996 National Guidelines and Bases for Education Law, research left the sphere of computing and migrated primarily to education and to understanding how students interact with learning environments, how to organize didactic material taught through virtual media, and how technology could facilitate the work of teachers—in short, how to promote high-quality education,” he states.
A 2017 study published by ABED identified 411 groups from public and private universities in Brazil in the Research Group Directory of the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) that were investigating distance learning in all fields of knowledge—education and computer science were some of the most common. “There are teams from all fields, including health, management, and human sciences. In the exact sciences, they mainly look at the development of digital technologies,” said the survey coordinator Vani Kenski, a retired professor from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) who is now research director at ABED.
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At Brazilian public universities, where 90% of students are enrolled in face-to-face education, distance learning increased from 154,000 students to 200,000 between 2013 and 2023. Distance-learning degrees were initially offered by decentralized initiatives like UFMT’s. The Rio de Janeiro State Center for Science and Distance Higher Education (CECIERJ) was founded in the year 2000 and now offers 16 courses, with hubs in dozens of cities. In 2004, the MEC created the Open University of Brazil (UAB), a program managed by the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES) that provides resources to 151 universities and federal institutes for distance-learning undergraduate courses, using facilities and teachers from face-to-face courses. The UAB currently supports 168,580 students, although it had a capacity of 264,000 in the middle of last decade. The number of spaces fell due to reduced investment in the system since 2016.
“We will return to the level of 264,000 spaces after upcoming application rounds,” says CAPES president Denise Pires de Carvalho. She says the funding cuts also compromised the quality of some courses: only half of them achieved ENADE scores of more than three. “The objective is to invest in improving courses that are currently not performing well enough,” she explains. “But we also have some really high-quality distance-learning courses, such as the degree in physics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, one in computing from the Federal University of Santa Maria, and many others,” she says. According to Carvalho, quality is related to teaching staff—who are the same professors teaching face-to-face courses at public universities—in addition to tutors having at least a master’s degree.
In the debate on distance learning in Brazil, the growth of remote teaching degrees is a prominent issue. An analysis of INEP and ENADE data by the Todos pela Educação movement found that in 2022, two-thirds of new teachers graduated from distance-learning courses. In 2012, that figure was just one-third. The survey also showed that the quality of distance-learning degrees in Brazil has fallen in recent years. The average ENADE score fell between 2014 and 2021 for nine of the 15 courses analyzed.
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Despite this decline, the remote model has become a mainstay of teacher training at a time when disinterest in undergraduate courses is leading to teacher shortages at Brazilian schools (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue nº 332). “In a state with a dearth of teachers, like Maranhão, it would be impossible to increase access to higher education in rural towns and riverside, Indigenous, and quilombola communities without distance-learning degrees,” says Ilka Serra, vice dean of extension programs and student affairs at the State University of Maranhão (UEMA), where she researches distance learning. The institution offers more than 4,000 places on undergraduate courses taught via distance learning with in-person hubs in 40 municipalities.
A new guideline on distance-learning teaching degrees, approved by the MEC in May 2024, sparked controversy by determining that at least 50% of the classes on such courses must be given face-to-face. The measure, if passed by the new regulations, would make many highly regarded initiatives unfeasible. “We are very worried,” says computer engineer Marcos Borges, president of the São Paulo State Virtual University (UNIVESP). The state institution was founded 12 years ago primarily to train teachers. It currently serves 80,000 undergraduate students via distance learning, one-third of whom are studying teaching degrees (the rest are in the fields of computing, business, and production engineering). “If it becomes mandatory to include this level of in-person classes, we will have to reevaluate whether we can offer teaching degrees. It will not be possible to have professors working on-site at more than 400 hubs, many of which are in small and remote towns,” he says.
He highlights the importance of UNIVESP to public education in São Paulo. “Through distance learning, we are now able to train teachers in various disciplines in small towns, where they are in very short supply,” says Borges, who is a researcher at UNICAMP’s School of Technology, Limeira campus. UNIVESP’s 430 hubs are located across 380 municipalities, of which 244 have no institutions offering in-person courses. “In these towns, students either study by distance learning or they go elsewhere.” Borges notes that discontinuing the courses would be especially harmful to people from lower income backgrounds who cannot study full-time. Among students who enrolled in 2024, 78% were also working, 85% attended a public high school, 58% had a household income of no more than three times the minimum salary, 78% were part of the first generation in their family to study higher education, and 55% were women. These students, Borges observes, would have particular difficulties with the face-to-face model. “Today we see even top universities that are unable to fill their undergraduate places. This does not happen with UNIVESP: we fill 99.9% of our more than 25,000 spaces per year,” he says.
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The MEC’s proposal of requiring in-person classes could lead to confusion about concepts that already involve remote and hybrid education. “Distance learning is characterized by flexibility in time, space, and curricular content. A course that requires at least 50% face-to-face classes is no longer distance learning,” says Daniel Mill, from Grupo Horizonte at UFSCar. “We need a new regulatory framework that thinks more about quality than format,” he says. At the same time, education researchers identified another phenomenon: the “remotification” of face-to-face teaching. In 2019, the MEC published a decree allowing universities to offer in-person courses in which up to 40% of the course is taught via distance learning (not including medical degrees). The previous limit, established in 2016, was 20%. In an article published in the journal Educação & Sociedade in 2022, authors from UFMT analyzed this change and concluded that rather than taking advantage of distance-learning technologies to improve face-to-face teaching, the process is often used to resolve shortcomings. “Because there are no rules, this type of online quota for hybrid teaching is often used to make subjects viable where there is a shortage of teachers. You can join the classes together and put them in what is considered distance learning,” says UFMT’s Ana Lara Casagrande, one of the authors of the article.
In 2020, the MEC commissioned the Center for Management and Strategic Studies (CGEE) to carry out a study on expanding distance education at federal universities. A panel of experts led by UNESP’s Klaus Schlünzen collected data on international initiatives, such as the UK’s Open University, Universidade Aberta in Portugal, and Indira Gandhi National Open University in India, which has three million students. The panel recommended that public higher education institutions become more involved with the teaching model and increase the number of spaces available. “It became clear that in a country the size of Brazil, distance learning is our only hope of achieving the target of 33% of the population enrolling in higher education. Public universities have a duty to promote high-quality education, whether mediated by technology or not, in order to achieve this objective,” Schlünzen says. He notes, however, that distance learning can never be a mass teaching method. “It is impractical for one tutor to be responsible for 500 students at the same time.”
In Schlünzen’s opinion, public universities are partly responsible for the distance education crisis because they have so far avoided institutionalizing the model. “Even the universities that joined the UAB system treat distance education as an addendum to their main activities and do not invest in distance education with the same interest and quality as they do for face-to-face teaching,” he says. According to him, there are some courses at Brazilian public institutions where one professor teaches four or five students in person. “In a hybrid model, this same professor could teach 20 distance students as well as the four or five in-person students. Universities need to review their approach.”
CAPES creates guidelines for online activities in face-to-face master’s and PhD courses Recorded classes do not count towards a program’s workload
In December 2024, the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES) published new rules on the adoption of remote activities in master’s and PhD programs. The guidelines authorize postgraduate degrees to offer some of their content online, as long as it is in a synchronous format (live classes and activities) and does not “represent the entire teaching workload of the course,” according to a statement published by the institution.
Recorded classes, like those used in distance-learning courses, cannot be included in the course load. “This does not mean that recorded videos are prohibited,” explains the CAPES president, Denise Pires de Carvalho. “In many courses, there is time for free study. Nothing prevents a teacher from recommending that a student watch a recorded class during this free time.” The new regulations were based on a report produced by a working group that analyzed the impacts of hybrid teaching on postgraduate studies.
Carvalho points out that the institution chose not to establish a limit for online activities, leaving each program to make this decision based on the specific nature of the course or field. According to CAPES, synchronous online classes and activities are suitable for providing high-quality master’s degrees and doctorates. “Knowledge generation is continuous and postgraduate courses are expected to follow scientific advances in real time, discussing the results of the latest articles and new scientific approaches. It is possible to do this in synchronous classes and activities,” the organization states. “Recorded classes, depending on when they were produced, could be completely out of date.”
The Technical Scientific Council for Higher Education at CAPES has already reviewed several proposals for distance postgraduate courses, but it has so far only approved one of them: in 2023, it authorized a professional master’s degree in energy and society to be taught via distance learning by the Celso Suckow da Fonseca Federal Center for Technological Education in Rio de Janeiro (CEFET-RJ). Forty percent of the course’s activities are carried out in person, including supervisions, research, and some classes. Only 18% of the content may be taught asynchronously without the live presence of a professor.
The story above was published with the title “Remote learning” in issue in issue 348 of february/2025.
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