The creation of working groups to monitor graduates of the affirmative action policy at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Uerj) is a fundamental step to evaluate the measure, said sociologist Luiz Augusto Campos. One of the leading researchers in the field, he is one of the organizers of the book Impact of Quotas: Two Decades of Affirmative Action in Brazilian Higher Educationwhich makes a detailed review of the policy and highlights challengessuch as the permanence of students in institutions.
“The Quota Law is not an end policy,” said Campos. “No one dreams of a utopia in the world in which each person has their share. It is a means of policy to reduce inequalities in the market [de trabalho]”, explained the professor of sociology and political science at the Institute of Social and Political Studies (Iesp-Uerj).
In his opinion, if the quotas do not have an impact outside the university, it means that, as a public policy, they have failed. “And we only know these impacts outside the university based on the trajectories of graduates”, he explained. He classifies Uerj’s action of setting up groups with former graduates as the most important point in analyzing the policy.
After 20 years of the university adopting the measure, in a pioneering way in the country, in 2003, Campos echoes the need for update of state law for admission to postgraduate studies. Uerj, unlike other federal universities with racial quotas, combines, in addition to racial self-declaration as black or mixed race, socioeconomic criteria for admission, limiting entry to candidates with up to R$2,277 in gross income per person in the family. The value is considered low, especially for social and racial quotas in postgraduate studies.
“A student classified as needy, in fact, does not reach a master’s degree, let alone a doctorate. And, if he wins a scholarship, he stops being needy. So, the Uerj postgraduate quotas really didn’t work”, analyzed Campos.
Quota students graduating from undergraduate courses gathered at the university at the end of November, Black Consciousness Month, to discuss their trajectories, defended that the socioeconomic cutoff be revised, so that it is possible to increase the number of black and brown people with access to this higher level of education.
According to a survey by the Center for Management and Strategic Studies (CGEE), a non-profit civil association, supervised by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI), black people make up just 4.1% of masters and 3.4% of doctors, while brown people account for 16.7% and 14.9%, respectively. Indigenous people account for just 0.23% of master’s degrees and 0.3% of doctoral degrees in the country. Between the years 1996 and 2021, 49.5% of master’s degrees and 57.8% of doctoral degrees were obtained by white people.
Law 8,121, of 2018, which established the programming of affirmative actions at Uerj and the socioeconomic cut, will only be reviewed in 2028. Until then, Campos defends that universities be used in admission notices and, based on university autonomy, review restrictions. “Few things today are as judicialized as entry into master’s and doctorate courses, the university is at risk, the ideal would be a law that is more lenient with socioeconomic limits”, he assessed.
