Brazil judge suspends penalties for low-performing medical courses

A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction suspending sanctions imposed by the Ministry of Education (MEC) on universities following poor results in the National Medical Education Assessment (Enamed). The decision was made by Maria do Carmo Cardoso, president of the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF-1), in response to requests from the Brazilian Association of Higher Education Maintainers (Abmes) and the Brazilian Association of Colleges (Abrafi).

The Enamed assessment, released in January, identified 107 medical courses out of 350 that received insufficient scores (grades 1 and 2). This led to supervision processes and potential penalties for 99 courses, the majority of which are located in private institutions.

Representing the universities, Abmes and Abrafi argued that the grading methodology was defined after the exam was administered and that there was a lack of prior disclosure regarding assessment criteria. Judge Cardoso stated that maintaining the sanctions had the "unequivocal potential to generate serious and difficult to repair damages to the institutions represented by the plaintiffs, as well as to the candidates." The Ministry of Education has announced its intention to appeal the decision.