As desigualdades sociais e o acesso ao ensino superior: o que pensam os beneficiários do ProUni

Abstract

This research aimed to know what students who participate in the experience of beneficiaries of an affirmative action program, Universidade para Todos (Program University for All – ProUni), think about this program of social inclusion to higher education. For a better understanding of the reality of those who use the ProUni scholarship, a brief history of higher education has been necessary since the time when Brazil was colonized until the present day, whose trajectory privileged the ruling class, and culminated with the increase of the private institutions to the detriment of the public ones. Investigating social inequalities as a consequence of permanent and unfair distribution of income that affects the country collaborated to justify the need for public policies that enable the economically disadvantaged class access to higher education. Through a semistructured interview, five students of the last semester of the nocturnal course of Pedagogy, of a private university of the west zone of São Paulo, gave testimonies that made possible to establish categories for Content Analysis. Contributed to the accomplishment of this research the consultation to several authors, such as Afrânio Mendes Catani; Alípio Márcio Dias Casali and Maria José Viana Marinho Mattos; Ana Mercês Bahia Bock; Antonio Carlos Caruso Ronca; Cristiane Pereira de Melo Oliveira; Dermeval Saviani; Júlio César Godoy Bertolin and Cristina Firenze; Ligia Carvalho Aboes Vercelli; Luiz Fernandes Dourado; Maria Laura Puglisi Barbosa Franco; Marta Arretche; Mitsuko Aparecida Makino Antunes; Otaíza de Oliveira Romanelli and Paulo Freire, among others. The research was developed from the following themes: origin and family situation of the students interviewed, the parents’ vision about the University’s daughter, social context of the students, their basic schooling, their leisure routines, personal changes they had during the course, difficulties and prejudices they faced during graduation, positive and negative points of ProUni, the representation of the Pprogram in their lives and career prospects upon completion of the course. The analysis of the above mentioned subjects led to the conclusion that the students belong to the economically disadvantaged class, coming from families that value studies, although, due to several difficulties they have low schooling. And those students consider ProUni a program that, in addition to allowing access and permanence to higher education, also promotes deep personal, professional and social changes to the economically disadvantaged class