Distance Education (DE) is an important modality in Brazilian educational context, since not only does it democratize education but it contributes to its expansion, reaching scattered cities throughout Brazil. It is increasing the number of educational organizations interested in obtaining the authorization and recognition for the provision of higher education courses within this modality. However, there are no further studies on the assessment tool of undergraduate courses of the Ministry of Education - MEC, unified in December 2011 and updated in May 2012. The central challenge of this work was, to analyze the instrument and identify the core competencies that should be developed by the institution and highlight the skills that can be characterized as distinctive to confer competitive advantages to those institutions and benefits to students. Therefore, a descriptive-exploratory research was conducted, with the choice of a private institution of higher education that, at the time of survey, was being subjected to the process of changes imposed by the MEC for obtaining the recognition of higher education courses in this modality. The research result shows four main organizational skills developed in the institution investigated that allowed the approval of the course by MEC namely: Management Assessment Course, Strategic Management and Policies for Distance Education, Human Resource Management and Multidisciplinary Teams, and Management and Planning of the Physical and Technological Infrastructure.