Evolution and trends of higher courses in geography in Brazil

Abstract

In recent years, a trend has been observed in higher education Geography courses in Brazil regarding the quantitative dynamics, the number of new students, those enrolled, registered, and those graduating – encompassing both bachelor's and teaching degrees. This has provoked, albeit still timidly, hypotheses about a "teacher shortage" and a decrease in demand for higher education courses in our scientific field due to the reduction in students. However, even though the data on the subject point to such an intention with fluctuations conceived from the year 2023 onwards, there are conjunctural elements that require better appreciation to support such assertions. In this sense, we take as our object of study the evolution of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), inseparable from the student body in its specificities, in the face of the expansion of Distance Education (DE) as a teaching modality with profound capillarity in the last decade, highlighting Geography courses as an area for analysis, aiming to examine the redefinition of the quantum of the factors listed above. This is a basic, explanatory research study that falls within the bibliographic-documentary category, where we fortuitously examined institutional data from the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (INEP). As a result, we can affirm that there is an expansion in the adoption of distance education, alongside the "resumption" of in-person Geography courses.