The relationship between evaluation and regulation in Higher Education: keys for the debate

Abstract

To promote the quality of higher education, several countries came up with policies of institutional evaluation, in the eighties. Those policies, aiming at identifying potentials and obtaining subsidies to overcome deficiencies, follow different concepts and procedures of higher education supervision policies (regulating measures), promoted by State initiative and destined to establish
minimum rules/criteria for the functioning of the institutions. Nonetheless, the distinction between evaluation and regulation policies and actions is not always very clear, even for governmental agents involved in their elaboration and implementation. This article analyzes the relation between evaluation and regulation in Brazil, in the light of evaluating agencies in France, Spain,
Portugal and Argentina. For that purpose, it uses the main dimensions involved in the evaluation process performed by said agencies, denominated external evaluation. Those are as follows: i) bases and foundations of external evaluation; ii) the operational dynamics of the process; iii) elaboration of reports and assessments. Hence, some considerations can be established
regarding the cases analyzed, in order to point out challenges for the materialization of an evaluation policy in Brazil.