Enrollments in distance courses in the health area grew 78%

Distance courses in the health area had a 78% increase in the number of enrollments between 2019 and 2020. They already have more than 178 thousand students, according to data from the Census of Higher Education.

The survey was carried out by the company Educa Insights and released this Tuesday morning (22) by the Abmes (Brazilian Association of Higher Education Maintainers). The census is carried out by Inep (National Institute of Educational Studies and Research), an agency linked to the Ministry of Education.

The distance modality has been growing rapidly in Brazil since 2010 in all areas. In recent years, the release of health courses in this modality has further boosted the number of enrollments.

Nursing is the course with the highest number of new students in this modality, there were 43,300 new students in 2020 – an increase of 30% compared to 2019.

Since 2015, the country’s nursing councils have led a national mobilization for face-to-face teaching. The CNS (National Health Council) also joined different associations and entities in the area to defend that professionals who take care of medical care cannot have distance training.

After nursing, the course with the highest number of entrants was nutrition, with 27,839 new students — an increase of 70.5% compared to 2019. Pharmacy had a growth of 416% and reached 21,980 new students. Biomedicine registered an increase of 190%, with 27,045 new entrants.

“The growth in demand for courses in the health area was already happening and was accelerated by the pandemic”, says the president of ABMES, Celso Niskier.

In 2020, for the first time, distance learning courses received more new students than on-site courses, adding up both public and private students. According to the census, of the more than 3.7 million who entered higher education, 53.4% ​​chose distance learning courses.

Enrollments in this modality increased from 2.5 million in 2019 to 3.1 million in 2020.