Monitoring and assessment of assistance to the university student: the case of the University Residence Program of the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco

Abstract

The regulation and structuring of governmental actions aimed at the permanence of students in Brazilian federal public universities was mainly based on the National Program of Student Assistance (Pnaes) in 2010. However, the realization of social rights (in particular the right to higher education), provided by these policies, is not limited to the establishment of formal aspects, requiring the public power instruments to ensure the monitoring and evaluation of programs implemented in order to make them effective. Therefore, the present research aimed to analyze the University Residency Program for Undergraduate Degrees (Prug) of the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (UFRPE), with the purpose of identifying the mechanisms used by university management to monitor and evaluate it, relating the importance procedures for guaranteeing the right to higher education within a federal public university. To do so, documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews and application of questionnaires were used as means of data collection. The information was analyzed using Discourse Analysis, allowing the researcher to make qualitative inferences. The investigation revealed that the institution lacked efficient mechanisms, criteria, indicators and parameters for carrying out factual follow-ups of the Prug, thus preventing the achievement of the objectives established in the Pnaes, which even shows that it has not filled all the existing gaps in the field of student assistance, since it was ignored because it did not constitute evaluation resources for these governmental actions, attributing such responsibility to educational institutions, which, as identified in UFRPE, are not always able to provide satisfactory answers. The paper is divided into six sections: introduction (1), methodology (2), federal public university: access to permanence (3), Pnaes and university student assistance (4), monitoring and evaluation of student assistance (5) and final considerations (6).

Pnaes; Student Assistance; Monitoring; Evaluation