Education in Brazil: distance learning grows 474% in a decade

Between 2011 and 2021, the number of students in undergraduate courses in distance education (DE) increased 474%. In the same period, the number of students who entered face-to-face courses decreased by 23.4%. If, in 2011, the number of students entering via distance learning corresponded to 18.4% of the total, in 2021 this percentage reached 62.8%.

The data, which reflect the expansion of distance learning in Brazil, are part of the results of the Census of Higher Education 2021, released on Friday (4) by the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (Inep) and the Ministry of Education (MEC).

According to Inep, which coordinates the data survey, from 2020 to 2021, the increase in the number of students in higher education courses was caused, exclusively, by the EaD offer in the private network. In this period, this modality increased by 23.3% (24.2% in private institutions), while the number of in-class undergraduate courses fell by 16.5%. In the private network, 70.5% of the students, in 2021, entered through remote courses.

"The comparison confirms the growth trend of distance learning over time. In 2019, for the first time in history, the number of entrants in EaD exceeded the number of students who started face-to-face graduation, in the case of private institutions," explained Inep.

Growth

The director of MEC's Secretariat for Regulation and Supervision of Higher Education, Vandir Cassiano, said that from 2017 to now this growth was more expressive and, in the face of the covid-19 pandemic scenario, EaD numbers leveraged.

"In 2020, 2021, and now 2022, we have an absurd growth, it is something already sedimented, it is a path with no return," he said, alerting to the need to evaluate the quality of this education.