Affirmative action keeps public universities more inclusive

Assessment was presented by Brazilian researcher during round-table session on education at FAPESP Week Montevideo.

By Elton Alisson, in Montevideo  |  Agência FAPESP – Growing numbers of places for undergraduates and the implementation of affirmative action policies by Brazilian public universities starting in the 2000s have enabled these institutions to remain slightly more inclusive than private universities since the 1980s in a comparison based on the earnings value of specific degrees and ensuing careers.

This assessment was presented to FAPESP Week Montevideo by Ana Maria Fonseca de Almeida, an associate professor in the University of Campinas’s School of Education (FE-UNICAMP) in São Paulo State, Brazil, during a round-table session on education sciences and languages.

The symposium was organized by the Montevideo Group Association of Universities (AUGM), Uruguay’s University of the Republic (UDELAR) and FAPESP, and took place on November 17-18 at UDELAR’s campus in Montevideo. Its purpose was to strengthen existing collaborations and establish new partnerships among South American scientists in a range of knowledge areas. Researchers and leaders of institutions in Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Paraguay attended the meeting.

“In the 1980s public universities in Brazil began seeing a change in the undergraduate profile that led to a reorganization of the majors offered. At that time it also began to be clear that public higher education institutions were becoming more inclusive than private HEIs based on a comparison of the most valuable degrees available,” Almeida said.

“Some of the studies we’ve performed in recent years show public universities maintaining this position by increasing the number of places offered and implementing affirmative action programs starting in the 2000s.”

She added that some public universities in Brazil began expanding and democratizing access by means of systems such as ethnic or racial quotas, plus-points based admission, and reservation of places for minorities, for example.

Private HEIs increased undergraduate numbers by using public funds to award grants and loans to cover tuition fees, especially for economically underprivileged students.

The outcome of these actions was expansion of the number of undergraduates enrolled at public and private HEIs. The number of places increased from just over 1 million in 2000 to more than 1.8 m in 2010 at public HEIs, and from about 2 m to some 5 m at private HEIs in the same period.

“Even before the 2012 ‘quota law’ reserved 50% of places in courses and classes at federal universities for students from state schools, a significant proportion of Brazil’s public universities had already implemented affirmative action programs, reserving places for descendants of Africans and Amerindians, for example,” Almeida said.

In São Paulo State, the University of São Paulo (USP) has increased the number of places it offers by 35% since 2000 and in 2005 opened a new campus in the eastern of the state capital, a predominantly working-class area.

UNICAMP increased the number of places by 41% and also built a new campus in the city of Limeira, opened in 2008.

The Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) multiplied tenfold the number of places, 10% of which are reserved for descendants of Africans and Amerindians, as well as unveiling several new campuses.

And in 2005 the Federal University of the ABC (UFABC) was established with the innovative purpose of offering interdisciplinary majors and with 50% of its places reserved for students from state schools – 35% of these being reserved for students who declare themselves to be descendants of Africans and 1% for descendants of Amerindians.

“UFABC and UNIFESP adopted very different patterns of growth in the numbers of places offered and the impact was also different in each case,” Almeida said.

UNIFESP, for example, increased the number of places by building campuses in different parts of the state capital, including one in a poor area of the city.

“The campus opened in a deprived part of São Paulo resulted in greater social inclusion by offering less valuable courses,” she said. “This helps sustain the hypothesis that inequality exists inside public universities.”

The policy implemented by UFABC attracted students from relatively high-income families but with lower levels of schooling, according to Almeida.

The proportion of wealthier students, however, is even higher in private HEIs, she said.

Almeida and collaborators are engaged in a study that analyzes the distribution of relatively well-off students with the best grades in the National Student Performance Assessment Examination (ENADE) in 10% of Brazil’s most academically prestigious economics courses, offered by both public and private HEIs.

The findings show that private HEIs graduate a higher proportion of students who come from high-income families than public HEIs in such courses.

“Public universities have remained more inclusive than private ones,” Almeida said.

Binational courses

Another speaker in the session on education sciences and languages was Patricia Viera Duarte, a professor at UDELAR, who presented preliminary results of a comparative study of public policy and forms of democratization and internationalization of higher education in border regions of the Southern Cone of South America, which comprises Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The first stage of the study focused on Brazil-Uruguay border regions including Santana do Livramento and Aceguá in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul State, and Rivera and Chuy in Uruguay.

The second stage will analyze Brazil-Paraguay border regions, and the third will focus on Brazil-Argentina border regions.

Some of the preliminary findings point to novel forms of convergence in higher education in these regions, such as the creation of pilot binational courses from which students will graduate with dual degrees.

“Some HEIs in these border regions currently award binational degrees, meaning the degree is awarded by a single institution but valid in two countries,” Viera said.

Students in these border regions have social and cultural differences representing potential hazards that could prevent them from either accessing higher education or earning a degree.

For this reason, Viera went on, HEIs in such regions face the challenge of enabling these students to acquire knowledge and the necessary skills to succeed in academic life.

“The experiences of university courses in these regions show that their contextual, institutional and curricular characteristics help surmount the barriers to access and course completion faced by local students,” Viera said.

“But care must be taken not to create new forms of ‘exclusionary inclusion’ by adapting excessively to the local context and neglecting the national and global contexts.”

Read more about FAPESP Week Montevideo: www.fapesp.br/week2016/montevideo.