Performance of Brazilian universities in view of the General Course Index (IGC)

Abstract

Higher education plays a fundamental role in the economic development of a country in terms of meeting society's demands. Quality in higher education has been a recurring theme in recent years, especially after the creation of the National Higher Education Assessment System (SINAES), which established a global and integrative institutional assessment system in line with all Brazilian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). SINAES is responsible for producing quality measurement indicators such as the Indicator of Difference between Expected and Observed Performance (IDD), the Preliminary Course Program Score (CPC), and the General Course Index (IGC). The latter measures the overall performance of higher education institutions. Thus, this study aims to analyze the IGC of public and private universities of the five Brazilian regions in order to describe the performance of HEIs by region, identify possible intraregional and interregional discrepancies, and suggest opportunities for improvement. The results showed that public universities outperformed private ones in all regions, particularly the north and southeast regions. Regarding variability, private universities had the best performance in the center-west and north of Brazil. However, a thorough assessment of the performance of HEIs by region requires an integrative analysis of IGC results aligned with other assessment subsystems that integrate the multidimensional assessment of SINAES.