Democratização e ensino superior no Brasil: a análise da política de cotas na perspectiva dos estudantes da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (2018-2021)

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze the understanding of students who enter through the policy of social income quotas about this policy. To achieve this goal, at first, a theoretical framework is constructed that allows the understanding of the processes of exclusion of certain groups, protagonists of quota policy, to public Higher Education. This is necessary, because it is based on the understanding in this work that the lack of access of certain groups of students to higher education is one of the expressions of the social issue in the bourgeois order. Therefore, a synthesis is made, from a bibliographic survey, on the constitution of the social question in the capitalist system and the answers given its expressions as well as the particularities of the formation of the social question in a country of dependent capitalism such as Brazil. In a second moment, it is followed by the analysis of the development of Brazilian Higher Education and its expansive cycles to then be examined affirmative actions in federal universities, with emphasis on social quotas, and their implementation at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF). From the construction of this reference, a profile of the students who joined the UFJF in 2018 is carried out by the income quota and semistructured interviews with some of these students in order to achieve the proposed objective. The research shows that students entering through the policy of social income quotas find barriers to access to a public university due to social and educational inequalities and that they understand the quota policy as one of the possibilities of facing this barrier and expanding their opportunities to enter public higher education. It also reveals that, in general, students agree with the criteria established by the Quota Law and that it directly contributes to the democratization of Brazilian Higher Education, being extremely relevant for their lives.