AN ANALYSIS OF THE BRAZILIAN LEGISLATION FOR QUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION

• Autor(a) principal: Hemsley, Pedro
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Economic Analysis of law Review
• Texto Completo: https://portalrevistas.ucb.br/index.php/EALR/article/view/6612
• topic: Signalling; higher education; quality assurance policy

Low-quality education is a major concern for public policy. In Brazil, the government addresses this issue with a Quality-Assurance Policy: colleges must be accredited before starting operation, and then are audited by the government periodically. Low-quality colleges suffer penalties that may include shutdown. This paper investigates the effectiveness of this policy in a signalling model in which education, whose quality is known, is used as a device for a worker to inform potential employers about his exogenous productivity. I have two main results. First, Quality-Assurance decreases the college sector, leaving students out. Second, it does not increase quality. Additionally, I show that high interest rates make the choice of high-quality sub-optimal for the college whatever the cost to provide quality, even if the Quality-Assurance Policy is most strict.