This dissertation refers to the self-assessmentcomponent of the National System for Evaluation of the Higher Education (Sinaes) at the University of Brasilia (UnB), since this was the precursory institutional assessment in the country, in the context of higher education. The study had as objective to comprehend in which way what has been foreseen by the Sinaes for self-assessment receives a new significance; and it justifies itself by the importance of this discussion in the context of an assessment policy that focuses on higher education institutions (IES). By means of a qualitative approach and the case study, it was possible to analyze the construction of the meaning of self-assessment by the academic community of the institution; the conformation of the self-assessment process to the dimensions established by the Sinaes; and the utility of the results, having as a time frame the years of 2014 and 2015, which already suffered reformulations in self-assessment adopted from the first year. The data gathering was carried out by consulting official documents and through semi-structured interviews with actors that are involved in the selfassessment field of the higher education institutions from both theoretical and practical point of viewone representative of the National Commission for Evaluation of the Higher Education (Conaes), one from the Directorate of Higher Education Assessment of the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (Daes/Inep), four Brazilian researchers of the higher education assessment field and four members of the Sefl Evaluation Commission (CPA) of UnB, each one of these four members belonging to a representative segment of the Commissionprofessor, student, technical administrative and organized civil society. In order to analyze the documents and speeches, a documentary analysis was performed under the perspective of Bardin (2004) and it was adopted a dialect view that conducted the entire research process. With the assistance of the mediation and contradiction methodological categories, as well as the ones of content: regulation, formative assessment, quality of the higher education and self-assessment reports kept to the bureaucratic fulfillment, this view allowed to contemplate the objectives of the research, always taking into consideration the confrontations and tensions inherent to the implementation of assessment. The dissertation confirms the thesis that the selfassessment still needs to be developed, considering that, due to the stains of belonging to a set of norms in the past and in the present, it is not able to perform its intentional formative role. Having UnB as reference, it was possible to notice that even its years of experience in assessment were not able to avoid the neglecting situation in which the self-assessment was taken to. In all planned phases of this appraisal processpreparation, development and consolidation -, it is possible to notice an institution that still needs to comprehend what self-assessment is and its importance, the age...