Brazilian education system

Racial and social quotas help minorities to get into university

Until some time before, education system in Brazil was like a funnel: only the richest and whitest students managed to get higher education levels. Students coming from other social groups would have fewer chances to get to the next education level. But that scenario started to change when universities and government decided to intervene on it


By GABRIELA ZAGO
from Pelotas, BRAZIL


Brazilian education system has many similarities with other countries' system, and also some peculiar aspects of its own. Education is divided into two main types - Basic and Superior, and those are subdivided into other types. Students start their education around the age of 5 to 6 years old. Basic education system lasts for 12 years. The first 9 years are for "Elementary" learning, and the last three correspond to "High School".

After high school, by when students are generally of an age of 17 or 18 years old, they should try the very competitive "vestibulares" - how admission tests for universities are called in the country. Each university has its own test, and student must apply specifically for the course they want to enroll to. Tests are often composed of multiple-choice or single-choice questions on the subjects learned in the three years of high school, followed by an essay or dissertation on a particular topic.

Schools, as well as universities, can be public or private. Although the majority of school students come from public schools, situation gets a little bit inverted in public universities, where most students come from private schools. Public universities are more prestigious, and, therefore, more difficult to get into, since their admission tests tend to be more competitive. With that scenario, those who receive better education end up getting better on the selection process. And this is the context in which racial and social quotas have emerged.

Racial and social quotas for getting into university

Since the beginning of this century, the necessity of racial and social quotas for admission into public universities and for public jobs started to be discussed vividly in the country. The pioneer to implement this system in Brazil was Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro, that, in 2003, reserved 45% of its positions for Afro-descendants, students with disabilities, students coming from public schools, and other minorities.

Affirmative actions aren't something exactly new. The racial quotas system in Brazil, for instance, is "imported" from a similar model from the United States. The idea behind the quotas - and affirmative actions as a whole - is to try to compensate historical gaps with actions that can, in a long term projection, work on reducing the differences once produced by the society itself.

In the case of the quotas for university admission, students who match the criteria for the quota will compete among themselves. Other students outside the quota criteria will then compete with the others that do not match the criteria either. As a result, those who compete by the quota system end up getting more chances to get approved. And, in a long term, the difference between both social groups tend to be overcame.

Social quotas are based on economic issues and are designed for poor students. Racial quotas, for instance, are based on racial matters. A case regarding racial quotas that generated some rumor happened in 2007, when two twin brothers applied for Universidade de Brasília. In that institution, students should attach a picture of themselves to their application, and a commission is in charge of defining who really is black and who isn't. In the case of these two brothers, one was considered black, and other was considered white, despite the fact that both were identical twins. That brought the discussion up again, raising the question that there isn't a scientific measurement for determining whether someone is black or not - especially in a country where most of the population has mixed origins, and, thus, almost everyone has different levels of black blood running on its veins.

Currently, there are public universities offering admission quotas for students coming from public schools, and also for Afro descendants. Government offers some college scholarships for private universities, too. There's ProUni, a system managed by the government by which those who have studied all their Basic Education on a public school and got good grades can have 50% or 100% of private university fees paid by the government. There's also FIES, a public funding system for education, by which the student from a family with low income can pay only half of the course fees while is studying, and then pay the other half after graduation.

According to IBGE (2000 census), around 45% of Brazilian population is composed of self-declared black or "pardo" (a mixture between black and white) people. This percentage varies from state to state. Admission tests from different universities try to adapt to the state percentage - some offers 50% of their positions for self-declared black students. Others offer only 20%. There are also universities that offer a percentage of their positions for students that come from public schools. Even though other students complain - and even start law suits against universities claiming the position that would be theirs if it weren't for the quotas - results will be seen in the future, when more and more Afro-descendants or from poor families employers will get a chance to finish university and get a better job.

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Sources / Further reading:

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(Published: 10.03.2009.)