Before launching, 'under a more social bias', the new student financing format, renamed 'new Fies', the Ministry of Education asked the National Institute of Social Security (INSS) and the Federal Revenue to 'track' the debtor data of the previous version of the program.
The information was given, this Tuesday (25), by Minister Camilo Santana, who avoided providing further details on the rules that should guide the granting of new financing. A recent estimate points out that the amount of Fies debts would now exceed R$ 11 billion
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The rigidity of the rules for granting resources – used to pay part of the tuition fees at private universities – is pointed out as one of the causes for the significant reduction in student participation in the program, which would have 'dropped' from 700,000 to 50,000, more recently.
In addition to not fully financing higher education costs and forcing students to take on debt, Fies has been harshly criticized for assuming the character, more of a financial program than a social one, as it should be, the principle.
When commenting on this distortion, the minister guaranteed that “Fies will once again be a social program and will have a new debt renegotiation program because a large part [of the students] is indebted”.
Although he avoided explaining better what this new 'format' would be like, Santana revealed that the program "will return to fund the ceiling". Asked about how the renegotiation of the debts would take place, the minister limited himself to adding that "work was carried out to identify the type of debt".
“What we did: we asked for INSS and Federal Revenue data to cross-reference information because we didn’t even have the information regarding the type of debt, the type of debtor, to find out if that person did not pay because he did not want to or because he could not,” said the holder of the Education, adding that such “information is being cross-referenced to find out if this person is working, if he is in the formal market of work".
A recent example of default was exposed by the G1 website, in which medical students belonging to downtown income, admitted to leaving the course, due to the disparity between the cost of studies and the funding ceiling of the program. Last month, the MEC raised the maximum amount financed per semester for the medical course from R$52,800 to R$60,000.
