Costs in federal institutions of higher education: Comparative analysis between two Federal University of Southern Brazil

The education, allied to the development of countries, and their benefits with reflections in costs both for individuals and for society, are of concern to both the State and families. Under the Brazilian higher education, the cost is debated around the so-called cost per student. The Ministry of Education established a formula to calculate this performance indicator, and the Court of Audit uses this as a way to measure the performance of federal institutions of higher education. However, for some researchers, this is an indicator that needs improvement, to the extent that fails to cover all aspects related to the measurement of the performance of these institutions, leading to a bias. This work has as main objective to compare the costs of two federal institutions of higher education in Brazil, in order to identify if any changes occurred over the years analyzed are significant.