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L\u00e9o Ramos Chaves<\/span><\/a> Students at the Federal University of ABCL\u00e9o Ramos Chaves<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n In recent years, the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP) and S\u00e3o Paulo State University (UNESP) have also reformulated their admissions policies. After a decade of awarding bonus points on entrance examinations for public school students and black, mixed-race, and indigenous candidates, in 2015, USP began offering admission slots through the Unified Admission Platform (SISU). SISU selects candidates for admission to federal universities based on ENEM scores. Of the 11,147 slots available at USP in 2018, 2,745 will be awarded via the SISU platform across three separate lists, with 423 places offered for candidates at large, 1,312 for students who completed high school in public schools, and 1,010 for public school students self-identifying as black, mixed-race, or indigenous. With its new admission policy, USP successfully increased the proportion of freshmen from public schools from 32.3% in 2014 to 36.9% in 2017.<\/p>\n A study by USP\u2019s Office of the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Student Affairs in 2016 compared the performance of students admitted through admission examinations and via the SISU platform across 22 undergraduate majors. At the end of the second semester, students admitted through entrance examination had outperformed SISU entrants in majors such as medicine, law and social sciences, whereas SISU students had the edge in courses such as materials engineering, economics, physics, and chemistry. In both cases, the difference was marginal.<\/p>\n In July, USP again changed its policy and instituted a system that will allocate half of its spots to public school students, with a portion of these reserved for candidates who self-identify as black, mixed-race, or indigenous. The initiative will be phased in, with 37% of admissions in each program reserved for public school students in 2018, 40% in 2019, 45% in 2020, and finally 50% in 2021. \u201cThis is the first time that USP has adopted an institutional policy on social and racial quotas,\u201d states USP\u2019s associate dean for undergraduate student affairs, Ant\u00f4nio Carlos Hernandes.<\/p>\n At UNESP, initiatives like these have been in place for some time. In 2013, the university pioneered a quota system similar to the one used at federal universities. Using the system, UNESP progressively expanded its public student allocation to 50% in 2018 admissions, with part of the allocation reserved for black and mixed-race candidates with the goal of enabling them to account for 35% of total admissions. According to the university\u2019s associate dean for undergraduate student affairs Gladis Massini-Cagliari, \u201cUNESP has long been successful in attracting a strong freshman population from public schools, but it took quotas to meet the 50% target.\u201d<\/p>\n L\u00e9o Ramos Chaves<\/span><\/a> Medicine students at UNICAMP in 2016, where an admission exam bonus system helped recruit 70% of freshmen from public schoolsL\u00e9o Ramos Chaves<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n That target\u2014of reserving 50% of slots for public school students and 35% for black, mixed-race, and indigenous candidates\u2014was set as part of the S\u00e3o Paulo State Merit-Based Higher Education Inclusion Program (PIMESP) launched at the end of 2012 by the state government and adopted in varying formats by the three state universities. \u201cPIMESP was launched in response to public demand that a larger proportion of university students come from public schools and reflect the diversity of our population. As a result, state universities have had to redesign their admission systems,\u201d explains Fernanda Estevan, a professor at the USP School of Economics, Administration and Accounting (FEA-USP) and an expert on affirmative action.<\/p>\n In her habilitation thesis in 2017, Estevan investigated the effects of the admission examination bonus system introduced at UNICAMP in 2005, a then-innovative program designed to broaden social and racial inclusion in the university without resorting to quotas. \u201cThe program was beneficial and delivered positive results,\u201d she concluded. The system was designed around a fact that, according to Estevan, was poorly explored in public debate. \u201cIt was based on statistical evidence that candidates from public schools whose admission exam scores did not differ significantly from those of candidates from private schools could perform very satisfactorily, and often outperform their private-school counterparts. Presumably, then, granting a 40-point bonus could help to bring talents from public schools to university.\u201d<\/p>\n The researcher found that the system improved the chances of public school students being admitted to UNICAMP by 30%, in addition to increasing the proportion of students from low-income families. No undesirable effects from the bonus policy\u2014such as students losing the incentive to make an effort to pass the exam\u2014were observed. According to Estevan, there are indications that the bonus system had a positive influence on career choices by emboldening public school students to venture into the most selective majors.<\/p>\n The program\u2019s effects were constrained\u2014the number of admissions from public schools plateaued at 35% of total admissions\u2014by factors unrelated to its design. \u201cWhen the system was first implemented in 2005, the number of candidates from public schools rose dramatically, but then remained flat the following year. This could be explained by a number of factors, such as the larger number of admissions on offer at federal universities and grants offered for tuition in private universities within the PROUNI (\u2018University for All\u2019) program, but these would need to be examined in greater depth,\u201d she explains. Renato Pedrosa, a professor at the Institute of Geosciences at UNICAMP who coordinated the admission examination from 2003 to 2011, notes that the percentage of individuals who complete high school in S\u00e3o Paulo has stagnated at 66% for the past decade\u2014the national average is 55%. \u201cWe assumed it would increase, and with it the percentage of candidates from public schools applying for and passing the admission exams. But that didn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n A 50% target for freshmen from public schools led state universities in S\u00e3o Paulo to change their admission rules<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Two years ago, UNICAMP made an initial attempt to increase inclusion without having to resort to quotas by raising the admission exam bonus to 120 points. The proportion of freshmen coming from public schools was successfully increased to an average of 50% of the university\u2019s total student body in 2016 and 2017, as required under PIMESP. However, this increase had unexpected effects: in highly competitive majors, such as medicine and architecture, in which the range of candidate exam scores is typically narrow, the bonus provided a large advantage to public school students, far exceeding what an affirmative action program would be expected to provide. In less competitive degree programs, candidates admitted performing very poorly in their admission exams and later struggling to keep up. \u201cThe exaggerated bonus distorted the exam results,\u201d Knobel acknowledges. According to the dean, the new hybrid system of bonus points, quotas and admission examinations is designed to be efficient in achieving social and racial inclusion while also attracting candidates with high potential.<\/p>\n Experience to date with quotas and other forms of affirmative action in Brazil has dispelled initial fears that student attainment and the quality of education would decline dramatically as a result. \u201cWhen competition for admission is high, with more than 50 candidates per slot, there is virtually no risk of quota-aided students gaining admission unprepared. Because the number of high-performing candidates is always very high, there will always be plenty among them who are affirmative action beneficiaries yet able to succeed in university to become high-caliber professionals,\u201d states Renato Pedrosa. The risks of using quotas, he says, are mostly concentrated in majors less in demand, where candidates can be admitted who are not prepared to pursue those majors. For Pedrosa, the idea that admission exams are the only appropriate method to determine whether an applicant is qualified for admission is false. \u201cStudents with the highest admission exam scores rarely are the best performers in college. We can craft admission pathways that will attract students with high potential even if they do have some weaknesses or are not adequately prepared for the admission exams.\u201d<\/p>\n Sociologist Rosana Heringer has surveyed the effects of admission quotas at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where she is a professor at the School of Education. She dismisses the idea that the system has had negative effects on the quality of education. \u201cStudents struggling to keep up and failing STEM courses may be somewhat more prevalent among quota beneficiaries, but in fact, this is common among the student population more broadly,\u201d she states. \u201cThis has always been an issue in programs where there is little competition in the admission exam. In the pedagogy degree program, many students find it difficult to keep pace with reading assignments and have not developed good writing skills. In our licentiate in physics degree program, students often struggle with courses involving mathematics. We\u2019re now also seeing these issues in some other majors, but the tools are there to address them.\u201d<\/p>\n These tools fall into two major categories: providing the financial means for students to continue their studies, particularly through grants, and helping students through academic difficulties by providing pedagogical and psychological support. In Brazil, efforts have focused on the first category. Rosana Heringer is leading a research project that is evaluating how the education systems in Brazil and the US compare with respect to the admission and retention of black and mixed-race students. \u201cIn terms of admission to higher education, the systems in each country differ widely from each other. The proportion of people aged 18 to 24 attending university in the US is three times higher than here. There, college education is overwhelmingly paid for by students, although some may benefit from household-income-based tiered tuition arrangements, student loans, and grants offered by philanthropic organizations. However, student debt has become a chronic and serious problem in the US,\u201d she notes.<\/p>\n